


fortunate son

by Anonymous



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 1960s, 1970s, Agent Adams is a real FBI agent this time, Angst, Courtroom Drama, Dark, Dark Jughead Jones, F/M, FP Jones II is abusive, Gen, Murder, Out of Character, Serial Killers, and edgy, but I tried to keep the OOC in character if that makes sense, character assassination, definitely, love you guys, serial killer Jughead, sorry Jughead and to a lesser extent a bunch of other characters, who don't come out looking too good
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2019-06-27 23:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15695571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Convicted killer Forsythe 'Jughead' Jones sits in a cell under sentence of death.As his last day fast approaches, Jughead's friends, foes, and one reporter reconstruct bit by bit his woeful story, from cradle to final curtain.





	1. to think but nobly

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just gonna put a blanket content warning on this for serial murder, domestic violence, other disturbing stuff, and some sexual content.
> 
> And for the record, I don't hate Jughead. He's actually one of my favorites (S1 Jug at least. In This House We Don't Acknowledge S2 Jug Except For One Or Two Things I Maybe Kinda Like). It's just that I also like screwing with his character. 
> 
> One more thing, just so no one wastes their time: the fic's tagged 'Betty/Jughead', and even though their relationship's quite important to the story (in a creepy way) it's definitely not very sweet and there's not much of a happy ending for them. Not that I want to discourage anyone from reading my stuff but in case you're looking for good romance...this is probably a bad place.

**Montgomery, USA**

**_1984_ ** — **_eleven hours ago_ **

Toni sat down across the steel table. She rested her hands on the cold surface.

Her interviewee stared back at her. He leaned back in his seat, a placid, easy smile on his face. Toni returned the smile. It was just common courtesy.

He was handsome, in a slight, mischievous sort of way. His eyes were sleek, blue and animated. The way they flickered reminded her of twin torchlights, blinking in the darkness. His shoulders and his waist were slender, but he always looked to have a wiry strength to him.

Toni set the ponderous tape on the table. He watched it silently, bemused. His lips puckered. She hit ‘record’.

He smiled again. This time she didn’t smile back.

“So, Mr. Jones—” She stopped, because he raised a hand to cut her off. She nodded, reprimanding herself silently. Of course. He’d already told her so many times. “I’m sorry, Jughead.”

“Thanks. That’s better,” he said. “Really…just between you, me, and your readers,” he motioned to the tape recorder. “I’m not a fan of Mr. Jones.”

Toni chuckled a little bit, and then felt guilty.

“Jughead, I’m just wondering what you hope to achieve with this interview?”

Now it was his turn to chuckle. He rolled his head around.

“Achieve? I can’t say there’s much left to be achieved, can you?”

She shrugged.

“Well then…why consent to it? You must have something you want to say or else you’d just have kept your mouth shut. Sorry. Pardon the—“

“I appreciate the frankness,” he said.

“Right. So, why then?”

Jughead sighed.

“The writer in me, maybe. He just can’t stand to go out without his story being told.”

“It is a bit theatrical, I suppose,” she ventured. “Last minute.”

“I would think _you_ would appreciate the scheduling,” Jughead said with a gleam in his eye, reaching over to sip from a glass of water.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

He leaned back, self-satisfied.

“If you can’t trust a man with less than twenty-four hours to live, than who _can_ you trust?”

* * *

**Riverdale, USA**

**_1955_ **

He came into the world silent. The doctors worried because the boy would not scream. His mother, half-lucid with the exertion of the birth, could see and feel little through the haze of pain and the drug cocktail. She could hardly manage to worry.

The man in white held the infant in his arms. The lad, rosy and pink and possessed of brilliant, intelligent blue eyes and a shock of silky black hair, only blinked and squirmed. He scoped out the room, like he was appraising an alien world.  

When he _did_ at last begin to cry, it was a low, miserable weeping and not a keening wail.

Despite the oddness of the first few moments, he was pronounced a healthy baby boy. And in some senses, he was.

They scrawled ‘Forsythe Pendleton Jones III’ on the crisp new birth certificate that evening.

‘Gladys Jones’ was the name of the mother, as the doctors wrote it.

‘Forsythe Pendleton Jones II’ was the name of the father, but he wasn’t there.

When Gladys carried the newborn home, she felt like she was walking a gauntlet. Like Riverdale itself was staring. She would turn nineteen in a few days, so her boy’s birthday would be within two weeks of her own. Wasn’t that sweet?

The trailer was hardly the stuff of fairy tales. Nothing a new bride and new mother would be eager to brag about. Gladys supposed a lighter soul than her own could see a palace in the rundown little place, if she were so in love that nothing else mattered. But that wasn’t the case.

When she at last came home from the hospital, eyes dark and skin pasty and sticky, he wasn’t there. She wasn’t surprised. FP would be somewhere with a switchblade or a bottle in his hand, and all that entailed. Better he was there than here, if he was in such a state.  

She laid their son, who was smiling and cooing now, into his crib. It was a good, sturdy crib made from powerful, ancient oak. It was a gift, a good gift from Freddy Andrews, who was a good man, and had built it with the same all-American thrift and consideration with which he built everything.

It seemed most good things in their lives came from without.

The boy fell asleep almost immediately. Gladys lit up a cigarette. She needed it desperately. Images of the wedding flew about her head like bats. Could there have been a sadder affair?

There had been a Justice of the Peace to make it all real. There had been a handful of witnesses, including her father with his smoking eyes and gnarled hands. The courtroom was drab and miserable, and even the American flag cinched to the big golden staff seemed to droop in embarrassed sadness. She had not worn a dress and FP had not worn a suit. It had been done because it had to be. That was the way of things around here.

She didn’t care what people said or thought, but that was not the real problem. She had not prepared to be a mother anymore than FP had prepared to be a father. They would be better parents than their parents, perhaps, but that was saying little. If FP didn’t cripple the boy he would be a better father than his.

Gladys shook her head and wiped away a tear or two. She flicked her cigarette out through the window. She imagined it landing among the dried leaves scattered around the trailer and stretching out towards the woods. She imagined flames curling everything into brittle cinder. Perhaps it would be better that way.

She flicked the radio on. Elvis Presley’s crooning filled the dingy little room.

The boy—the III—shifted in his crib. He stretched a hand out towards the ceiling. It wasn’t his fault. He’d had less of a say in this than anyone else. And yet his life would bear the brunt of the mess. That was the great tragedy of it all.

Gladys ignited another cigarette, and wondered when her husband—what a funny word that was—might come home.

“FP and Gladys had their kid,” Fred Andrews said, in his fine, comfortable middle class house across town. It was October and the leaves were tumbling from the branches.

Mary smiled sweetly. She lifted her head from the heavy stack of books, red hair springing out in frizzled clumps. She had an exam in a few days time. An important one. It would mean the difference between her continued ascendance and a truly celestial fall back into small-town mediocrity.

“What did they name him? Forsythe Pendleton?”

Fred smiled back. He shrugged, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Two rooms away, in his lovingly constructed nursery, six-month old Archibald Andrews slept soundly.

“As a matter of fact,” Fred said, “they did.”

Mary laughed lightly.

When they were boys Fred and FP had sworn to each other their children would be best friends, just as they were.

Fred quietly hoped that it had not been a silly childhood dream—that it would still be so. He hoped they could be better friends than he and FP were now. Maybe they could do it all again, with all of the victories and none of the defeats. He hoped.

“Did you hear they had their little boy?” Hal Cooper asked, softly. He stepped in through his front door, holding little two-year-old Polly in his left arm.

Alice lifted her head. He stomach was growing and making it more and more difficult to move. They had already decided on Charles if it was a boy and Elizabeth if a girl.

“FP and Gladys?” Alice asked, her voice betraying as much concern and sadness as curiosity.

“Mhhmm,” Hal murmured. He nuzzled his daughter and mumbled something sweet and cloying.

Alice shook her head.

“How old is Gladys? Eighteen?”

“Nineteen,” Hal answered. He walked towards the stairs, Polly tottering after him, gripping his hand.

“Nineteen,” Alice echoed silently. Her lips moved without a word. She drummed her knuckles on her thigh. She felt a wave of fear and worry. Her unborn daughter—she knew, somehow, it was a daughter—moved. “Nineteen.”

“I’m going to put Polly to bed,” Hal said.

The stairs creaked.

“What did they name him?” Alice called after her husband.

Hal stopped halfway to the landing.

“What do you think, Alice?”

* * *

  **Niagara Falls, USA**

 **_1984_ ** — **_six months ago_ **

“He was your friend,”

Archie looked up at his interrogator.

Agent Adams looked just like how a G-Man should look. He was not built too powerfully, but he did not look weak either. He had a professional, dangerously bookish face. His hair was cut short and even. He would slide just as easily into a dusty library as into a blazing firefight. He moved with practiced calm. Archie wondered how he kept his suit pressed so immaculately.

Archie was bigger than him, broader and probably stronger, but he was still intimidated.

“He was my _best_ friend,” Archie answered. His heart beat furiously. The room was dark, and seemed tailored to maximize his discomfort.

“ _Best_ friend?” Adams smiled. He lit up a cigarette of his own, and did not offer one to Archie. “I guess you must know a lot about him, then.”

“I guess I don’t,” Archie said, voice breaking.

“Well, you know _something_ , of course. Something from the beginning.”

“I don’t know anything you don’t,” Archie told the FBI man, brown eyes dark and angry.

Adams leaned back, smirking, smug and self-assured.

“I’m not sure about that. Even if you don’t think so. A lot of folks don’t know what they know.”

“Are you calling me stupid?” Archie growled.

“Nope. But from that reaction, I’d wager that’s something that happens a lot?”

“Go to hell!”

Adams sighed and puffed on his cigarette.

“Just talk to me, son. We both want to go home.”

Archie drummed his fingers on the table. He didn’t want to this to be happening, even if it was. Maybe it would all just go away. Maybe it would go away faster if he helped it along. He looked the self-satisfied FBI man in the eye.

He took a deep breath, and cooperated.

* * *

  **Riverdale, USA**

**_1962_ **

Archie made friends easily. People liked Archie, and he tended to like them. He was animated, quick, and eager. He was always ready to reach out and do something, whether it was good or mischief.

Even his hair, bright red and innocent, promised folks that he was a nice, sweet kid.

Jughead’s manner seemed calculated to minimize him. He slouched, so he looked smaller than he was. He talked in short, lilting, teasing sentences. He tried to pass himself off as a half-person.

Archie wanted to be friends anyway.

It happened mostly because Archie willed it. But Jughead did not resist as much as he could have.

Archie could take a break with Jughead. They didn’t always have to tumble in the weeds or tramp through mud (even if they did sometimes). They could just sit in Archie’s living room. And Jughead liked being there, because for whatever reason he didn’t much like being at home. Archie wasn’t sure why, because _he_ would spend all day at home if he could, but that was just that. They could just sit calmly and play with his toy dinosaurs or else sit back in quiet repose and watch _Captain Kangaroo_.

The other kids made fun of him for being friends with Jughead sometimes, but it didn’t stop _them_ from being friends with Archie anyhow. Archie didn’t care one way or another. He was proud of his quiet, taciturn little comrade. Jughead was smart. He noticed things. He was careful and capable.

They crashed through the underbrush of a field a few miles from Sweetwater River one afternoon. It was hide and go seek in teams with a few other kids from school. They were meant to ferret out the duo of Betty Cooper and Cheryl Blossom—a formidable duo indeed. Archie bounded ahead of his friend, head bobbing, searching for a flash of blonde or a flash of ginger in the dusky woods or the endless fields. It was nearly sundown. The beams of light twinkled intermittently through wispy cloud cover or the branches of trees. Archie squinted into the fading glow.

Jughead trailed behind, clenching and unclenching his little seven-year-old hands into fists. His blue eyes took in and devoured the whole world.

“I bet they’re _this_ way!” Archie said, pointing out the way towards the river. “By the big oak.” There was a big, ancient oak there that Riverdale’s children aptly named the ‘big oak’. He had no particular reason to think they were there, save that it was large and remote and contained a dozen crevices a child their age could fit into.

“Nuh uh, Archie,” Jughead said softly. He grabbed his big friend lightly by the arm and turned him around.

“Nuh uh? Why not?”

“Because.” Jughead smiled. His angelic, cherubic little face glowed beneath curls of jet-black hair. Jughead pointed at the forest floor with a knobby, pale finger.

“ _What?”_ Archie demanded, still not understanding.

Jughead led them along on his way. He followed a trail only he seemed to see. They wended their way around gnarled old tree trunks and green little saplings. They dodged gopher holes and jagged boulders.  

They slid down the sides of a little gulley. Archie watched as Jughead charged into a thicket of sword ferns and collapsed fir branches. He threw aside the rotting detritus, and revealed the two little girls. They squealed in surprise as they were apprehended.

“Found you!” Jughead cried, triumphant.

Betty sprung out of her hiding spot, leapt up, and threw her arms around her friend.

“You _found_ us, Juggie!” she exclaimed. Jughead returned the hug.

Cheryl was more recalcitrant.

“Nuh uh. No fair,” she insisted.

“Yes, fair,” Jughead said flatly.

“Ugh! You’re so _stupid_!” Cheryl shrieked, as if that would make her somehow less found.

“No, I’m not,” Jughead retorted, still cool and flush with his victory.

Cheryl threatened to have her brother beat him up.

Archie tuned out as the two argued. .

When at last Jughead persuaded Cheryl to accept defeat, Betty sidled up to him and asked: “How did you know where we were?” her eyes great and glistening with curiosity.

“Yeah, how?” Archie seconded.

“I just looked for plants and leaves and stuff that were all crushed. And twigs that were broken. Where you fellas had walked. It’s real easy. You just gotta look for stuff.”

Archie was impressed. He could never have seen such a trail. He wasn’t as smart or observant, and he was okay with that. Jughead _was_ those things. He could see where other kids couldn’t. He could find things and find people easily. He had a keen mind. He wasn’t rash.

If other kids made fun of him for his sullen nature that was fine. He could ignore them. Usually.

One day a few weeks after the game of hide and seek, Reggie Mantle shoved Jughead to the ground and called him a geek. His book slipped from his fingers. It was some detective story or another. Archie could see the bright little cover from across the playground. Jughead didn’t get up at first. A few tears sprung to his eyes.

Archie strode across the playground to help his friend, but then something subconscious urged him to stay put. He planted his feet into the ground and watched. Jughead sat in the dirt, knees to his chest, and said and did nothing as Reggie berated him. He was not a violent boy. Everyone knew that.

Finally, Reggie tired of tormenting his victim and turned to go on his merry way. Jughead stood calmly. He left his book in the dust. He picked up a heavy, knotted stick. His tormenter swaggered away, oblivious.

Jughead stepped forward and attacked from behind, cracking Reggie over the head with the branch. Reggie cried out and went sprawling into the dust. He got up again belatedly, knees wobbling with shock, and groaned in pain. He brought a hand to the back of his head and it came away tinged red with blood. His face went pale. He stumbled away in bewilderment. Jughead fixed him with an uncharacteristically cold stare. He held the stick firmly in his hand like a club.

When he had recovered, Reggie charged at Jughead in blind rage. Jughead swung the stick again, batting away his foe’s little fists.

Reggie cut his losses and backed away, hands and head bloodied, real fear in his eyes.

Archie helped his friend dust off his clothes, and then they abandoned the scene of the crime, to run smack into Betty Cooper.

Archie always thought Betty was a lot like the little angel on the top of the Andrews’ family Christmas tree.

She was bright and happy and existed in shades of blue and pink. Her hair was blonde and it bounced when she walked. She was a universal magnet for adoration from cooing adults, and Archie wasn’t sure any kids really disliked her, either. If she had a disagreeable side to her, Archie had never seen it.

Beside him, she was Jughead’s fiercest protector.

“Juggie, _what_ happened?” she demanded, when she saw him coated with dust, and saw the drying tears on his rosy cheeks.

“Reggie pushed me,” Jughead sat flatly.

Betty’s breath hitched and she mumbled something about Reggie being a bully. Jughead allowed her to roll up his pants and sleeves to see if he was ‘hurt bad’.

Neither he nor Archie mentioned that he’d struck back this time.

Betty found two skinned knees and insisted that he should go home and have his mother put band-aids on. Jughead said he would, but they all knew he wouldn’t.

Then she rolled up his sleeves and found a pattern of ugly black bruises along his slender little right forearm. She gasped. Reggie had not left those.

“Jug, what happened?” Archie asked. He knew, of course, but it seemed right to ask anyway.

Jughead shrugged, with the same impassive, calm face he always wore.

“My dad grabbed my arm,” the seven-year-old said. “He was mad about something. At my mom, I think. It was a dumb fight. Like always.”

“He hurt you?” Betty asked, her massive blue-green eyes bright with concern.

“A little, I guess,” Jughead replied. “It happens sometimes. He doesn’t really mean to. Only when he’s really mad. Or when he drinks beer.”

“That’s not good,” Betty said.

“So? It doesn’t even hurt that bad,” he insisted. He made them promise to forget about it, and they promised they would. He rolled his sleeve back down.

That was Jughead, peaceful and analytical, and sometimes both recipient and exponent of cruel, sudden violence.

* * *

  **Bronxville, USA**

 **_1984_ ** — **_three months ago_ **

“Forsythia, huh? I can’t say I’ve ever heard that name before.” Toni puffed on her cigarette.

The girl, pretty and slight, with her brother’s black hair and blue eyes, smiled at her. The dormitory was empty. They met in the common room, strewn with coeds’ packs and books and dirty clothes, but devoid of human life except the two of them.

“Well, they started calling me Jellybean pretty early,” she said.

“Is that what you want me to call you?” Toni asked, trying to keep her voice easy and friendly. Jellybean was young. Toni remembered being her age and didn’t want to scare or discomfit her.

“If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

“Great.” Jellybean paused for a moment. “Sorry—I gotta ask you to put out the smoke. It isn’t me, but a lot of my roommates will be peeved if everything smells when they get back.”

Toni nodded.

“No problem.” She put it out, and then craned her head back to scope out the dorm. “Second year?”

“Fourth.” Jellybean corrected.

“Ah. Okay.” Toni nodded. “I kinda miss college sometimes.”

Jellybean snorted.

“I won’t. But…then again, you didn’t come to talk about college, did you?”

Toni smiled bitterly. The girl was right. It was better to get to the meat of it.

“No. I didn’t. Good call.”

“Are you just writing an article? Or a book? Or…”

“A book, hopefully. Eventually.”

“About my brother?”

Toni paused. She suddenly felt like a vulture. Feeding on tragedy and misery.

“Yes.”

“He always wanted to write a book. I guess this is the closest he’ll get, now.”

“Folks can write books from prison. I know, trust me,” Toni said. “I’ve seen it done.” And it was true. She’d known guys who wrote bestsellers from behind bars.

“I doubt anyone would buy it.”

“Well…then you’d be underestimating—or overestimating—the reading public. It would sell like hotcakes, I promise.”

Jellybean nodded. She tented her fingers and bowed her head.

“Anyway, you want to know about when he was a kid, right? If there was anything weird? Anything…portentous, to use a big word?”

Toni shrugged. The girl had her pegged.

“Well…since you came right out with it.” Toni produced her tape recorder. She hit ‘record’. Jellybean smiled sardonically.

“He always liked death,” the girl said.

“He _liked_ death?” Toni asked.

She grimaced and spoke with no little effort.

“Death. Well...the end of life. He was fascinated by it. Always was. The end of life. The way people and animals—mostly people—became…to be crude—just...dead meat..”

* * *

  **Riverdale, USA**

**_1966_ **

Jellybean Jones learned how to hide very early.

When her parents got loud; when things started crashing and people got hurt, she would find the little nooks and crannies she could slip away into. They were places of refuge that soon grew familiar. She could count on them to shelter her until it was over. Sometimes she watched from her little hiding places, other times she couldn’t bear to.

One day, when Jellybean’s sixth birthday was a few weeks way, FP Jones came home—and he didn’t do that too often—bleeding from the stomach.

He didn’t say ‘you should see the other guy’, but he might as well have.

His right arm was coated in blood that wasn’t his. So was his switchblade.

Mom was furious.

Jellybean was prescient; the way some creatures can tell when a storm is coming. She slipped away into one of her hiding places before the screaming started. The closet between the bedroom and the bathroom. She watched through the slats.

Gladys laid into FP, screaming and crying.

He matched her screaming. More than matched it. A rack of dishes clattered and smashed. Jellybean winced.

She saw her brother. He was eleven years old, now. He stood along the living room wall, watching intently. He didn’t hide. He simply watched with his bright, intelligent eyes, as mom and dad tore into each other.

FP raised his bloodied arm, like a victorious gladiator.

“I was supposed to let him insult me? Like—“

“ _Listen to yourself!_ ” Gladys cried. “You sound like a damned child! Christ, go and get yourself killed! The kids would be better for it!”

Jughead played with his own hair.

“You shut the fuck up!” FP roared.

She struck him. She hadn’t meant to, and it wasn’t the first time she hadn’t meant to. She reached forward and struck him with much more force than she knew herself capable of, in the chest.

FP stumbled back.

Then he struck her.

Gladys careened backwards into the wall.

Jellybean watched from her closet, a few tears pricking at her cheeks.

Jughead watched from his spot against the wall, still nonplussed.

Dad grabbed mom by the shoulders and shoved her up against the wall. She dug her nails into his cheek with a fierce, animal rage. Blood flowed. Jughead bowed his head and closed his eyes.

And like that, the storm was over.

Both their parents cried quietly. And then just as quickly, perversely, they were in each other’s arms, lips hot and kissing, hands tugging and caressing. The violence twinned with romance made little sense. _Should_ have made little sense. But the two children watched silently.

Jughead ambled over to the closet.

“You can come out now,” he said flatly.

Jellybean crept out of her hiding place.

“Why are they always fighting?”

Jughead shrugged.

“They have a lot of stuff to fight about. Anyway, when they do it, they don’t do it again for a while. So that’s good.”

“Okay,” she sighed.

A paroxysm of violence was followed by sudden peace.

Jellybean hugged her brother. He hugged her back, but it felt robotic.

“What if one day dad got stabbed and he died?” Jughead inquired, more to the thin air than his little sister.

“Don’t _say_ that!” Jellybean gasped, horrified.

“It could happen,” Jughead insisted.

“Mom would take care of us,” the precocious five-year-old insisted.

“What if she died, too? We’re all going to die eventually,” he said.

Jellybean’s breath hitched.

“Stop _talking_ about that, Juggie!” she begged.

He bowed his head and fell silent.

But he spoke that way a lot.

_Suppose this person died. Or that one. Suppose they were beaten. Or stabbed. Or shot._

Sometimes, she almost got the sense he _wanted_ it to happen. If nothing else, to see what it was like. There was always the _suggestion_ of death in their nasty, brutish lives. Maybe he just wanted to see the logical conclusion. It frightened her a little bit.

One day Jughead came home carrying a sack, like Santa Claus.

“What’s in there?” Jellybean asked, ever curious. She reached out a pudgy five-year-old hand.

Jughead smiled devilishly. He undid the sack’s ties and reached inside. When he produced his prize, his little sister recoiled.

It was a dog’s skull, bleached white by the sun, dark sockets staring off into the shadows.

He retrieved more bones from the sack. Ribs. Femurs. Claws.

“I found it,” he swore. “Already dead.”

“That’s _gross_ Juggie,” Jellybean insisted.

“It’s _cool_ ,” her brother countered.

He turned the skull in his hands like Hamlet with poor Yorick. He ran his fingers over the ridges and dimples, plunging his thumbs into the cavernous eye sockets. Jellybean shrank away. The thing seemed like it was staring at her.

She disappeared to hide somewhere else.

Jughead remained with his skeleton. Taking the bones apart and rearranging them. Trying to see how they all fit together, and then putting them in places they didn’t fit. Possessing them.

He hid his prize whenever his parents came home. But he took it out again when they left. He’d never treasured anything so much—not even his journal.

It was satisfying.

One particularly hideous autumn night saw FP and Gladys Jones throw themselves into a particularly hideous fight. When it was over, both stood bruised and worn, shedding tears and blood. Gladys, still weeping and swearing, scooped up her now six-year-old daughter and stormed off to God-knows-where.

FP cursed after her, calling her names that would make the guys at the Wyrm blush.

Jughead watched silently.

Dad collapsed back onto the sagging couch and opened another beer while Jughead knelt close to the television, folding his rapidly thinning eleven-year-old body up towards his chest. Some shitty horror movie or another was playing. He watched with rapt fascination as some shambling beast raked its ragged claws again and again through the chest of a helpless, squealing victim.

Scenes like that spellbound him, even if he knew they weren’t real. Remains like that of the dog were fascinating, but all the more fascinating was the moment in which the living being made the transition into corpse. It was a brief, bloody instant, but it was an unfathomably powerful, intoxicating one. The moment of death had to be the most sublime of all things on the earth. It was the ultimate kind of shift. The great transformation.

“Hey, boy,” FP called from the couch. Jughead turned around, face framed by the television’s glow.

“Yeah, dad?”

FP sneered a sad, kind of ugly sneer.

“You like dead things? You like killing?”

Jughead wondered if his father had found the sack with the dog skeleton, where he’d secreted it away under the front steps. He didn’t mention it, and he didn’t answer the question. Evasion was the key to surviving around here.

“Did you kill anyone in the army, dad?” Jughead asked.

FP motioned for his son to come closer.

Jughead approached, cautiously.

“The thing about killing—they say it’s hard. It’s not. It’s easy. Real easy,” FP assured his boy. “It’s ugly, but it’s easy.” He shook his head. “These fucking kids out in California and down in the city screeching about Vietnam. I can _guarantee_ you Vietnam isn’t half as bad as Korea. Or as cold. Shit, I’d have _killed_ to be in the jungle.” He paused. “Well, I did.” Another laugh.

“They say war is hell,” Jughead muttered, echoing a line he’d read somewhere.

“Maybe for some guys. But it’s easy. You point your rifle and you squeeze the trigger. Usually—they go down in two shots, if not one. They just…fall, like a sack of rocks.” FP imitates going limp, like a corpse.

“So you did kill people, then,” Jughead said, interested now.

“Of course. Christ’s sake. Go to the room—bring me back the little tin box under the drawer. I wanna show you something.”

Jughead did as he was told. FP patted him on the shoulder. He winced. His shoulder still hurt from an incident a few days before. His father’s black-blue fingerprints were still visible there, beneath the shirt. It was weird how his dad’s hands could visit the same spot in both violence and affection.

FP clicked the little box open. It was full of photographs. Leica. Remarkably clear. Jughead squinted at the first picture.

He saw three men. Two men were soldiers, in their torn, dirtied fatigues, cradling their heavy rifles. It was a dark, crackling winter. Jughead saw the peaks of wispy mountains in the distance. Snowdrifts knee-deep swallowed up the men’s legs. One of the soldiers was his father. He was younger, leaner, and clean-shaven, but his father nonetheless. He saw a little of himself in there. The fair skin. The woeful eyes. The tumbling dark hair. Snow caught on the tip of his nose and his earlobes, and in the folds of his uniform.

The third man was dead. His head was slack, held up by his hair in FP’s grip. The dead man’s plain shirt was stained by dark red splotches. Blood mingled with melting snow.  His mouth hung open. His eyes were glazed and cloudy. FP and his comrade were smiling.

“You killed that man?” Jughead asked.

“Yeah.”

“Huh. You shot him, then?” Jughead prodded. “Just…” he mimed cocking and firing his finger.

FP chuckled darkly. He took a swig of his beer.

“Cut his throat. Real quick. He didn’t even scream.”

Jughead rifled through the pictures, even as his father sank into an alcoholic stupor.

The photographs, he soon realized, were to the last one grim souvenirs of war. Almost every photograph depicted smiling soldiers standing over bloodied corpses, like hunters with their trophies. Those that didn’t were epic, sweeping shots of choppers tearing over snowy battlefields, blazing fire, or tanks crushing down houses and people. Almost every one of those photographs included his father.

Sometimes he could tell the corpses had been shot. Sometimes he could see they had been stabbed, or slashed. So he knew what knives and bullets did. This was how human beings became dead meat. Corpses.

He looked through the pictures for hours.

* * *

  **Montgomery, USA**

 **_1984_ ** — **_eleven hours ago_ **

“So…you weren’t very popular in school. Well—you’ve told me as much before, but…” Toni leaned forward.

Jughead leaned back.

They were alone in the room. She could hear the guards’ boots scuffing the cement floor just beyond the door. Outside the little porthole-window in the drab, concrete wall, a roiling mass of demonstrators shouted and jeered. The noises needled at her. Jughead didn’t seem to notice or care for any of it.

“No. I was uh…a marginal figure in the community,” he smiled. “I had friends, just not a ton.”

“I’ve actually met Archie and Betty by now. I meant to tell you. You do them justice. They’re nice people.”

“You spoke with Betty?”

“Yes.”

Jughead nodded. He squinted and sniffed.

“Huh,” he responded, low and sour.

“What? You don’t like me talking to her?” Toni teased.

“That’s not it,” Jughead replied quickly. “I just…haven’t seen her in a long time.”

“Three years, by her count.”

Jughead smiled his bitter half-smile.

“That’s right. She put in an appearance at the first trial.Then again in Mobile. Nothing since then,” Jughead said, sucking his teeth.

“Hasn’t she written to you? Spoken to you?”

“Barely.”

“Can you really blame her?”

“No, I suppose I can’t.”

“She was your…first girlfriend, right?”

Jughead nodded, mechanical and cool.

“Yes.”

Toni rapped her fingers on the steel table.

“Were you in love with her?”

“Don’t make too much hay out of that when you write your book.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm kinda vague in this fic because I was, to put it mildly, not alive in the 60s or the 70s, and I don't want to get too much blatantly wrong. Nevertheless, if you notice that I DID anyway, please feel free to call me the fuck out.
> 
> Also, last but not least, much thanks to sullypants for being a beta reader.


	2. chrysalis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which things get substantially more disturbing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The '1983' sections in the last chapter were supposed to be '1984'.
> 
> Retconned.

**Riverdale, USA**

**_1969_ **

Jughead had always noticed people. He was good at that sort of thing. He noticed little quirks. He noticed the slight discordance to Mr. Weatherbee’s gait, courtesy of his old football injury. He noticed the way Cheryl Blossom’s long, silky ginger hair caught in the metal links of her necklace, and her quiet whimper of pain as she plucked it free. He noticed the subtle, almost imperceptible little white scar running alongside Chuck Clayton’s right bicep, where he’d cut it deep playing baseball in fourth grade.    
  
That was why he found it kind of funny when adults asked him if he was ‘noticing girls’ yet. He knew what they meant, of course, he wasn’t an idiot, but the question still struck him a little funny. He’d always noticed girls. He noticed boys, too. He noticed everything.    
  
But nevertheless, when they were all thirteen or so the new girl came to town. Veronica Lodge.    
  
“She’s pretty, isn’t she, Jug?” Archie said to him at lunch, offhand.   
  
They sat in the corner of the lunchroom, picking at inedible, rubbery strands of spaghetti. Jughead’s eyes slid back and forth. He pulled the brim of his hat a little lower.    
  
The new girl, Veronica, swaggered into the cafeteria, and she was pretty. She had great dark eyes and long black hair down to her waist. Her skin was tanned and it looked so soft and smooth and he kind of wanted to touch it. Her face was fine and lovely. She moved with an easy, playful self-assurance.   
  
Archie, Jughead could tell easily enough, was smitten.   
  
And from then, he couldn’t help  _ noticing _ people. Sometimes he quietly blamed Archie. As if, had he not pointed out that Veronica was pretty that afternoon, Jughead might have gone on for the rest of his days observing others with a detached apathy, untroubled by gut emotion.    
  
He didn’t like the feelings the films in health class assured him were perfectly normal and healthy.    
  
He noticed, first and foremost, Betty. He noticed that she was pretty, with her rosy lips and lively ocean eyes, and ready smile. He liked the way her cornflower hair looked pulled fast back into a ponytail or else tumbled loose around her shoulders.    
  
When they were very little he would tug it sometimes. She’d hated it, so eventually he’d stopped, because he weighed the enjoyment he got out of tugging it with the overall enjoyment he got from her presence, and the latter won.   
  
He started to wish he could tug it again.   
  
He noticed that Archie was growing taller and broader, too. His jaw was sharper now, his eyes narrower and keener. He was looking more like a man. He began to walk with a firmer, more adult gait, and like everything else, it did not escape Jughead’s powers of perception.   
  
But he noticed everyone.   
  
He noticed Cheryl Blossom and her brother, slender and pretty even if he hated them.    
  
But the problem with those carnal emotions was that Jughead carried a tight, hopeless tangle of emotions in his chest, and it was near impossible to extricate one from the others. So now that he was growing older and these new feelings were announcing their presence, he found himself incapable of keeping them separate from his other feelings, and they melted together into strange, perverse inclinations.    
  
Sometimes, when he was lying in bed at night, he had fantasies—just like the health class videos said was normal and healthy. Except he wasn’t sure the people that made those films would class these as normal and healthy.    
  
Images of bare skin and lips crushed together were always joined by other images. He saw the dog’s skeleton, spread out in parts. He closed his eyes and saw in his mind’s eye flashes from his horror movies, of creatures and killers in masks hacking their nubile victims apart. He saw the wrinkled old photographs his father brought from the war, the gory bodies crumpled at the feet of their conquerors.    
  
They all blended together into gore-drenched reveries that married brutality with sensuality, drenched his young mind in blood, and left his heart throbbing with a strange, heady excitement.    
  
Rather than let any of that slip, he learned to just keep his mouth shut when conversations turned towards sex or romance.    
  
“No, Reggie,” he sneered when his regular nemesis asked him, with a mocking lilt, if he even  _ liked _ girls? “It’s just that I’ve got two heads, so I think about other things sometimes.”   
  
He got a black eye for that one.    
  
Betty helped him tend to the bruise in the shade of a big redwood not far from the school. She dabbed his eye with a wet cloth and winced when he did.   
  
“Reggie’s such an ass,” she sighed.    
  
“You know that project on pre-human evolutionary ancestors we’re supposed to do? I’m doing mine on Reggie Mantle.”   
  
She giggled.    
  
Jughead hyper-focused on her wrist and throat. He watched her veins press against fair skin, and imagined the warm blood coursing just beneath. He watched Betty’s neck pulse softly in step with her heartbeat.    
  
He imagined lunging at her like a wild beast.   
  
Betty looked into his eyes, bright and innocent, and saw not a thing behind them.    
  
She was pretty. She was so pretty. Her bright blue eyes and her fine features were wonderful and attractive. But he didn’t really get those queasy, tremor-inducing butterflies in the gut until he thought of the blood.   
  
“Juggie…you’re shaking,” she pointed out.   
  
He looked down. His hands were trembling. He curled them into pale, crooked claws.    
  
“If I’d eaten lunch, I’d say it was something I ate,” he joked.   
  
“It is a little chilly out,” Betty said, shoving her hands into her sweater pockets. “We don’t want to catch our deaths out here,” she said, doing a fair imitation of Alice Cooper.    
  
Jughead’s hands were shaking far too much for it to be a case of the chills.    
  
He made a quick excuse and shuffled away. Not home. Just away.    
  
A few weeks later, he found himself following someone for the first time. He hardly even noticed he was doing it. It was something he did out of instinct, like an animal.   
  
It might not even have been following, at first. They may have just been heading in the same direction.   
  
But soon enough, he was trailing a few hundred yards behind an oblivious Jason Blossom, following the kid’s bright red hair through the dreary, sparsely peopled streets of Riverdale.    
  
Jughead always hung back far enough. Jason never noticed a thing. He didn’t have Cheryl with him today, which was an oddity, but made it easier for Jughead to pursue. Cheryl was the more perceptive twin.   
  
Jason stopped in at Pop’s for a burger. Jughead stood across the road, lingering on the edge of Jason’s world like a pale shadow. If Jason did see him, it was out of the corner of his eye and without a second thought.    
  
He watched him chew placidly, stopping periodically to sip a coke. Jughead had good eyesight. Even across the street and through the frosted diner window, he could make out his quarry’s profile and the dark part of his neatly coiffed ginger hair.    
  
Jughead felt like a hunter watching a deer drink at a stream. The deer never sees his death lurking in the offings. A shiver went through Jughead’s limbs. He wet his lips.    
  
Jason finished his meal and went on his way. Jughead figured out eventually he was headed for the drive-in, probably to meet someone. He kept following, his excitement creeping up into a crescendo.   
  
But—a crescendo of what? What could be the end to the  _ hunt _ ? He couldn’t very well shoot Jason, and then take him out to skin him and mount his head on a wall.    
  
Jughead realized there was no real satisfactory ending to the hunt. A few blocks before the drive-in, he broke off the chase.    
  
He trudged home in a foul mood. He felt as if he had been cheated of something. He had so excited himself and allowed himself no release.    
  
“Where the hell have you been?” FP slurred from the couch.   
  
Jughead scowled. FP never gave a damn where his son was. It was just an excuse to start a squabble.    
  
He stomped past his half-lucid father, remembering three steps to the kitchen that his mother and sister were gone. His mood worsened. Instead of roomier, the trailer felt smaller.   
  
“I said where have you been?” FP demanded again.   
  
“Hunting,” Jughead snapped.    
  


* * *

 

**New York City, USA**

**_1984—four months ago_ **   
  


Veronica Lodge was displeased.    
  
She didn’t like talking to the police, least of all the feds. Her father had made an art out of dancing on the line between crime and legality, and it had rubbed off on her.    
  
She always figured that if she ever did end up with an FBI agent in her parlor, it would concern her father and his sometimes-alternative business practices. But here was the professional, clean-cut Agent Arthur Adams sitting across from her with his hands in his lap, and he didn’t give a damn about her father.   
  
Veronica almost wished he were there about that, instead.   
  
“You paid the legal bills for his first trial, correct?” Andrews asked.   
  
A tape recorder lay on the table between them. Veronica grimaced and tried to ignore it. It purred quietly.   
  
“Yes. I did. So what? Everyone’s entitled a lawyer, aren’t they?” Veronica lit up a cigarette. “You’re a fed, you should know all about the sixth amendment.”   
  
Adams’ face yielded nothing.   
  
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t smoke just now, Miss Lodge.”   
  
Veronica smiled around the cigarette.   
  
“Sorry, agent. My house.”   
  
She puffed victoriously.   
  
“I only asked about the legal fees because I didn’t know you were all that close to Mr. Jones. It was quite a…magnanimous gesture.”   
  
Veronica sighed.   
  
“We were friends back in high school. And maybe we weren’t the closest friends, but so what? If a friend of mine is facing a murder charge, then why shouldn’t I offer to lend a hand? It’s not like I didn’t have the money to spare.”   
  
“So you didn’t believe him guilty when you offered to pay?”   
  
“Didn’t bel—of course I didn’t!”   
  
“Do you believe him to be guilty now?”   
  
Veronica shrugged violently. Her patience was already wearing thin. Government agents were always like this. They always spoke in that smug, barely mocking way that made her blood boil.    
  
“Well, the trial’s over and he confessed didn’t he? So I guess I do, agent.”   
  
Adams nodded and leaned in.    
  
“When did you decide you were going to buy him a lawyer?”   
  
Veronica shook her head.   
  
“Look, I hadn’t spoken to him in a year. He called from Maine saying they were trying to railroad him on some murder charges because they needed a scapegoat. I laughed. I didn’t think he could be a murderer, of course. So I gave it a little thought, and ultimately decided that, hey, if he needed a leg up in the dog-eat-dog world that is the American legal system, I was happy to help out.”   
  
Adams shook his head.   
  
“Let’s turn the clock back; when did you first meet Forsythe Jones III?”   
  
Veronica groaned.   
  
“Our first year of high school. When my family moved back to Riverdale.”   
  
“That’s right,” Adams said. “You’re a small town girl.”   
  
“Do you want me to talk to you, agent, or do you want me to throw you out on your ass?”   
  


* * *

 

**Riverdale, USA**

**_1970_ **

Veronica was friends with Jughead because they were both friends with Archie and especially Betty. It was the sort of friendship that would probably have dissolved quickly enough without their bridging companions.   
  
Veronica was trying to be nice, now. So she’d approached the girl who had a general reputation for being the nicest girl in school—Betty Cooper. As it turned out, Betty Cooper was more than a cutout paper doll and actually quite fun to spend time with. She was smart and driven, and sometimes not so nice, but always a good friend. Archie was a great, lovable boy who only ever did wrong out of ignorance, because he did not have a malicious bone in his body. The first time they dated, Veronica had a sneaking feeling that it wouldn’t work out. They had broken up within two months, and within another four, had gotten back together. This became a fairly regular routine through the rest of high school.    
  
Jughead was an odd case. He was weird, but not really an outcast. It was almost as if he was playing a role. The role of  _ outcast _ was still an integral one to the dramatis personae of the Riverdale community. If he was an outcast he was  _ Riverdale’s _ outcast.    
  
They rarely had an honest to God conversation that wasn’t mediated by Betty’s breathless discussion of a new book she’d picked out at the library or Archie blasting the radio at peak volume.   
  
“Let me ask you a question,” Jughead said one evening, when they sat on a hill at Pickens Park, waiting for Archie and Betty to arrive, but alone for the moment. “Do you think we’re friends?”   
  
Veronica opened her mouth to say ‘of course’ but stopped halfway. Were they? What made someone a friend? Jughead was an acquaintance at least, surely? Was there a line between acquaintance and friend?   
  
“I…think so?” she answered lamely at last.    
  
Jughead chuckled. He placed his hands behind his head and leaned back, staring up at the blue-red sky, and the blanket of stars chasing the sun over the horizon.    
  
“That’s cool. I think so, too. I am uh…fond of you, in case you thought otherwise.”   
  
“Well,” Veronica said, half-teasing. “Good to know.” She rolled over to look him in the eye. “Truth be told you’re a bit of a respite from the stifling normalcy around here.”   
  
“Oh, so I’m not normal?” Jughead asked, smiling.   
  
“In a good way!” She quickly changed topic. “Where the hell are Betty and Archie?”   
  
Jughead turned to her, an eerie smile spreading over his lips.   
  
“Perhaps they…met with foul play?”   
  
Veronica pursed her own lips.   
  
“You always think someone’s met with foul play.” She squinted and stared into the dark woods running along the boundary of the park. “Though I will say, it is a perfect night for an axe murder.”   
  
Jughead’s smile widened.   
  
“Absolutely. The park is filled with perfect places to lurk. Wait for some poor, hapless youth to walk by and—“ he mimed swinging an axe. Veronica chuckled. “See,” Jughead continued. “Betty and Archie don’t like me to joke about axe murders.”   
  
“Well, I’ll have you know you can joke about axe murder with me any time.”   
  
A few minutes later, Betty and Archie finally arrived.   
  
Jughead and Veronica never became fast friends, but they would find time for brief, teasing conversations when thrown together.    
  
Veronica could remember only one time they’d really hung out.    
  
The four of them were meant to meet up near Sweetwater River. Archie cancelled early, mumbling something about his father’s job. Betty cancelled at the last minute. In fact, she simply didn’t show up.   
  
So Jughead and Veronica were left alone together, at the riverbank, staring into the green murk, each holding up one end of the awkward silence.    
  
“You want some reefer?” Veronica asked, animating suddenly.    
  
Two joints later, they had gotten quite friendly.   
  
“I hope you make it.” Veronica sighed. She passed the joint back to Jughead. He took a hit.    
  
“Make it?”   
  
“Sure. You know. A bestselling novel. A beach house somewhere down in Florida. A place of honor in the annals of American literature.”   
  
“Veronica, if there’s one thing I can tell you for a fact, it’s that no Jones man has ever made it. “   
  
“There’s got to be a first, right?”   
  
The joint burned down.    
  
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”   
  
“I’m sure you’re meant for much more than the doldrums of small town life,” she promised.    
  
He raised an eyebrow.    
  
“Sure,” he exhaled a puff of smoke softly. The joint was spent, so he ground it out under his heel.    
  
They lay in the grass sloping down to the river, enjoying the light, pleasant cannabis haze.    
  
“You wanna hear a secret?” Veronica asked, her voice guarded but playful.   
  
“Sure,” Jughead muttered again, squinting at the stars.   
  
“Don’t tell Betty or Archie.”   
  
“Sure,” Jughead said for the third time.   
  
“Sometimes I feel like everyone here hates me. Like I’m this scheming, self-absorbed urbanite rich girl who blew in from the city to wreck Riverdale’s rural idyll. I leave a room and…I can’t shake the feeling that the moment I’m gone everyone gets busy tearing me to shreds.”   
  
Jughead breathes in and out deeply.   
  
“Well, I can’t speak for everyone in this town, but Betty and Archie certainly don’t hate you. Neither do I.”   
  
She nodded, unsure.   
  
“Thanks.” Veronica waited for a minute, and then she spoke again. “Your turn?”   
  
“My turn? To do what, supply the reefer?”   
  
“No, to tell me a secret. I told you one.”   
  
He paused for a moment. Then a thin smile alighted on his lips.   
  
“I feel kind of…restless all of the time.”   
  
“Restless how?”   
  
He scrunched up his face, struggling to put it into words.    
  
“It’s like…” Jughead laughed. “Shit, I’m only even attempting to describe it because I’m high. It’s like I feel numb a lot of the time—emotionally, I mean. Things don’t hit me very hard. Like maybe I’ve been run through the grinder so often my mind has built up calluses. And it makes me…restless. I don’t know.”   
  
Veronica nodded sympathetically. She reached out and patted his arm.    
  
“I think I get you,” she said. “You ever talk to anyone about it?”   
  
Jughead snorted. “Yeah. You. This is Riverdale. Who else am I going to talk to, Sheriff Keller?”   
  
“Maybe you need a date.”   
  
Jughead laughed at that.   
  
“From who?”   
  
Veronica grinned. She plucked a few blades of grass.   
  
“You should ask Betty out.”   
  
“There’s a laugh!”   
  
“I’m serious. I bet she’d say yes.”   
  
He shook his head and laughed again, doing a poor job of concealing the tinge of hope in his voice.   
  
For a while, they didn’t say anything.   
  
Then Jughead said: “thanks for uh…talking with me.”   
  
And Veronica said: “sure, no problem.”   
  


* * *

 

**New York City, USA**

**_1984—three months ago_ **   
  


“Miss Cooper…”   
  
Betty reluctantly opened the door a little wider. She peeked out at her visitor, less than pleased to receive him. The man was tall and ramrod-straight and dressed in an impeccable suit. He smiled at her.   
  
“Can I help you?”   
  
He flashed an impressive badge.   
  
“Agent Arthur Adams, FBI.”   
  
“What’s this about?” Betty snapped, voice short and clipped.   
  
“Not to be rude, miss, but…I think you know.”   
  
“Do you have any _legal_ justification for being here?”   
  
“Things will go much easier for both of us if you just talk with me.”   
  
Betty’s heart weighed down in her chest. She wanted to yell in this man’s face. She wanted to slam the door. She wanted to put everything behind her, all of this horror, even if she knew she never could. Tears rallied, and she forced them back.    
  
She invited him inside, because she didn’t have much of a choice. And she offered him a glass of lemonade and some leftover cookies because it was habit.    
  
Adams launched his battery of questions and half-accusations. Betty answered them best she could while preserving her dignity. She set her jaw and narrowed her eyes when he insinuated anything. She stretched her lips into a line when he hit her with a thinly veiled insult.   
  
“So when was the last time you spoke with Mr. Jones?”   
  
“Three years ago,” Betty said flatly. She gritted her teeth.   
  
“Under what circumstances?”   
  
“I think you know, agent,” she spat.   
  
“Indulge me,” Adams said.   
  
“I attended…his trial in Alabama,” Betty said coolly. “And before that, in Maine. To support him.”   
  
“So you believed him innocent?”   
  
“Yes! Listen—agent, why are you here? The trial is over. Jughead—Mr. Jones, is sentenced. So what do you want from me?”   
  
“Because your boyfriend is a murder—“   
  
“He is not my boyfriend, anymore,” she hissed. Her throat closed up. She balled up her fists and tried to drive back the anger, fear, and sorrow building inside.   
  
“Because your  _ former _ boyfriend is a murderer and a prolific one at that. So we need to build a complete profile of the man. And that includes speaking to friends, family, and…romantic partners. Past or present.”

* * *

 

**Riverdale, USA**

**_1971_ **

Betty couldn’t remember a time before Jughead Jones. He was a fixture of her life since the very beginning.   
  
She had an image in her head. She was a four-year-old girl, playing in the shallows of the Sweetwater River. She slipped on a submerged stone covered in slime, and tumbled headlong into the chilly water. Her mother, watching from shore, unaware that she was stricken. She thrashed and struggled against the current, and sucked in a single gulp of air before being pulled down again.   
  
As terror clouded her brain, she felt a small hand, hardly bigger than hers, grip her tight around the wrist and pluck her from the icy murk.   
  
Jughead stood there, smiling brightly. He had a gap in his teeth back then, and the kids at school mocked him for it, but he didn’t much mind.   
  
“Be more careful,” Jughead said.   
  
That was one of Betty’s first memories.   
  
Jughead had always been there.    
  
In truth, Betty felt like she had a certain duty to be for there him. Not like she didn’t genuinely enjoy his friendship—she did, he was smart, clever, and funny. But she also knew what his life at home was like, and knew that most kids at Riverdale High wouldn’t give him the time of day.   
  
So she and Archie would.    
  
Sometimes, Jughead showed up to school with bruises. They were usually concealed—dark fingerprints on his arms, or black, ugly splotches stretched over his ribs. But then he would be bending over or reaching and his shirt would ride up, and they would show.   
  
Most kids, and teachers, too, had learned to just ignore it. It wasn’t their business.    
  
But Betty would point it out, each time, even though she knew it annoyed him to no end.   
  
“Juggie…did your dad…”   
  
“It’s fine,” he said, curt.   
  
“It’s not okay, you know.”   
  
“I can handle it.”   
  
More than once, Betty considered calling somebody. That was until Jughead looked her square in the eyes one day, read her mind, and seethed: “I would rather die than have some government jerk come to my house and pretend to care about me and fuck things up even worse than they already are. Let it be.”   
  
So the bruises stayed.    
  
But that just gave her all the more reason to love Jughead. Because he needed it. And she did love him.    
  
Sure, sometimes he did odd things, but everyone did. No one was perfect. Betty could get over that.

She loved him nonetheless.    
  
Like that summer before junior year when they’d gone down to fish at the Sweetwater River. She’d felt quite silly, toting the fishing pole twice as tall as her, stumbling along well-worn woodsman’s paths in her brand new church shoes (her mother was furious). Archie, who had supplied the poles and the bait, led the way. Jughead brought up the rear.   
  
They planted themselves on a grassy bank, set their lines, and settled in for the day.   
  
Archie, who was really a bit of a softie, mandated that they should release the fish once caught. His friends agreed.   
  
And all went well until Jughead’s second fish. He pulled it ashore, while his friends were distracted by a bite on Betty’s line. He laid the flopping trout on the grass. Betty hardly noticed anything but a glint of steel.    
  
When she turned around, she saw that her friend had run his pocketknife down the fish’s belly, slitting it open from jaw to caudal fin. Viscera tumbled out onto the ground. The trout twitched a few more times, then died. Jughead cut away the fish’s gills, fascinated. He peered into the glistening muscle and the white bone, eyes sparkling.     
  
“Juggie!” Betty admonished.    
  
“What the hell, Jughead?” Archie snapped.    
  
Jughead raised his head to look at them. For the moment his eyes took on a weird, distant glaze. A terrifying blankness. Like he did not at all understand why they might possibly be upset.    
  
Then he blinked and said, “sorry.”   
  
He was just fascinated by anatomy, he told them. His father had taken him fishing before, and they’d always cut up the fish, he said.    
  
His friends, a little shaken, but always forgiving, decided to consign the incident to memory.     
  
It was little things like that, but it was never enough to make Betty stop loving her friend.    
  
And yet, she never, in a million years, thought she would end up dating him. It just wasn’t something that crossed her mind. That just wasn’t the sort of relationship they had, or ever would have. Until it was.   
  
It happened in the first half of sophomore year.    
  
Betty managed to talk her way into heading the flagging school newspaper (not that it was particularly difficult), the same one her father had run when he attended Riverdale High twenty-something years ago.   
  
It was fun, even if she ran it on a skeleton crew of herself and three freshman who volunteered part-time.   
  
And Jughead.    
  
He’d joined up because he was bored. And more than that, because it gave him another excuse to be away from home. Not for his father’s sake—FP couldn’t give less of a damn where his son was most of the time. It was for Jughead’s own sake, so he could tell himself he was out of the house because he needed to put in time at the paper, not because he didn’t want to be home.   
  
They were always the last ones to leave school, and Weatherbee even let them lock up sometimes.    
  
“Sometimes the temptation to do a bit of late-night vandalism is almost too much to stand,” Jughead would joke as they shut off the big fluorescent lights and clicked the Blue and Gold’s office shut behind them. “I need you to keep me on the straight and narrow, Elizabeth Cooper.”   
  
She would smile and roll her eyes.     
  
On a December evening two weeks before Christmas break, when the air was so cold it seemed to crack, they slipped out of the office and into the empty halls. They chattered in the freezing air.    
  
The school was dark. Ugly shadows crept along the lockers, spilled from closets and empty classrooms.   
  
“This place gets a little spooky after dark, doesn’t it?” Betty said.    
  
“I like it. It’s peaceful.”   
  
“Maybe. I suppose,” she concedes.   
  
“Besides, I like it when it’s just the two of us,” he admitted. “It can be nice. Peaceful,” he repeated.   
  
Betty leaned up and kissed him. It was over in a second, and they did not speak of it once for the duration of their walk home.    
  
But it happened again the next night, and again the one after.   
  
Soon enough, Betty supposed it was accurate to say they were ‘going steady’, even if that sounded absolutely ridiculous when Veronica first said it aloud.    
  
But Jughead was a wonderful boyfriend. He would sneak them in for free movies at the Twilight. He would scrounge together the money to buy her a book or two for Christmas or birthdays, despite his chronic pauperism.    
  
He offered her reefer once or twice, though she declined. She was curious, but terrified that a bit of the smell would cling to her clothes when she came home to her hyper-perceptive mother.    
  
“Never knew Mr. Jones was such a dreamboat,” Veronica teased her at lunch. Betty playfully slapped her on the arm. Veronica went on, undeterred. “He is kind of handsome, when you look at him right.”   
  
“Shut up!” Betty giggled.    
  
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Betts,” he promised her one evening, as they lay beneath the old trestle over Sweetwater River, listening to the rustling pine trees and the croaking frogs.    
  
Betty looked up at the stars through the slats in the trestle.   
  
“You’re only seventeen,” she smiled. “Give it some time.”   
  
“But there’s nothing like a teenage romance, right?” he said.   
  
He reached out and held her hand. She felt the skin of his palm and his knuckles, hardened in some places and soft in others. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the breeze and the warm sensation of another body next to hers.    
  
Yes, he was perfectly sweet and considerate, except—   
  
Sometimes, Betty couldn’t help thinking that his manner seemed a bit affected. As if he was reading from a script or repeating something he’d seen in a movie. Like his mouth was moving out of sync with his thoughts. Like he didn’t mean half the things he said, and couldn’t quite figure out how to mean them.    
  
She shrugged it off, and would have shrugged it off better had not been for the other oddities.   
  
He liked to sneak into her room at night, creeping up the trellis, lifting the sill, and slipping in like the dashing hero from some old bodice-ripper.   
  
Betty thought it was romantic enough sometimes. Except sometimes he would rouse her from sleep with a cold, clawing hand on her shoulder or leg; even on her throat once or twice. She would jolt awake, eyes wide with terror, and suffer a few moments of sheer panic before she realized that it was he.     
  
Then he would laugh. He would cackle like she’d never seen him cackle. She would snap that terrorizing her in that way wasn’t funny, and that he was to desist immediately. But it scared her a little how absolutely hilarious he seemed to find her raw terror.    
  
“Just a little joke,” he’d whisper.   
  
Once, he really outdid himself.   
  
Betty was half-asleep, hovering between dream and reality. The covers were drawn down to her belly. The window sat half-open. Her parents were both gone. Polly was out. The lonely house grew five times larger and filled itself with monsters.    
  
She jerked awake when she heard a rustling at her window. A dark, featureless shape swept into the room. It stood upright, face behind some kind of black mask. Its right hand glinted. Her eyes acclimated to the dark and she traced out the shape of a big, ugly hunting knife. The figure stalked closer, raising the knife in an arc.    
  
Betty screamed louder than she’d ever screamed. She might have woken people in Greendale.   
  
Jughead whipped off the mask.    
  
“Cool it, Janet Leigh, it’s me.”   
  
Betty’s terror melted into all-consuming rage.   
  
“You bastard!”   
  
She sprung from her bed to give him a good shove. Maybe back out the window.   
  
She stopped short because his eyes frightened her. They were crystalline blue like always, but they looked paler tonight. His lips were wet. His breaths came in shallow, quavering gasps. He seemed excited. Aroused, even.   
  
Betty took a step back.   
  
“Calm down,” he managed.   
  
“That isn’t funny!” she snapped. She summoned up the courage to sneak another peek at the knife in his hand. It was real, and wickedly sharp. She shivered. “Jughead—get out, I’m tired, and I’m not in the mood for this. Out. Out you go!” she pointed to the window.   
  
“Alright. Goddamn,” he huffed.     
  
He descended the trellis and disappeared from sight. Betty shut the window and locked it.    
  
She forgave him that, even if she shouldn’t have.    
  
But then, that wasn’t the end of it.   
  
Jughead had a habit of disappearing. He would drop off of the face of the earth for hours and sometimes days at a time; no one seemed to know where he was. He wasn’t at the Twilight. He wasn’t at Archie’s or her house. He wasn’t at school. He wasn’t at Sweetwater River. He certainly wasn’t at home.    
  
“I go find someplace quiet and write,” he said, dryly, when questioned.   
  
“You don’t even have a typewriter, Jughead,” Betty responded.   
  
“Yeah, well, neither did Cicero,” he retorted.   
  
Betty huffed.   
  
“I just—“   
  
“Look, I don’t want to be an ass, but does it really bother you that much that I go and take a little time to myself now and again?”   
  
“It’s just…we get worried when you vanish like that.”   
  
“Well, don’t. Find something worth your while to worry about.”   
  
And with that, it ended.   
  
Except, a few weeks later, something else happened.    
  
She, Jughead, and Archie sat around a table in the school courtyard, ostensibly studying for a test.    
  
“I’m tempted to make a virgin sacrifice,” Jughead muttered. He tried for the fourth time to work out a quadratic equation.    
  
“Don’t go spilling blood just yet, Juggie,” Betty spun the notebook around and quickly solved the last few steps of the problem.   
  
He scowled, and then smiled.    
  
Archie got up to toss his lunch tray.     
  
Jughead hefted his backpack onto the table and began to paw through it.    
  
“Where the hell are my pre-calculus notes?” he growled. “Christ, I swear this backpack is a straight portal to hell.”   
  
A folder slipped out of the backpack and clattered to the table. Jughead didn’t notice. Betty did. A few shiny slips of paper protruded from the folder. She looked closer. They weren’t paper. They were Polaroids.    
  
The first one was of a house against a starry night sky.   
  
The second was of a window, and through the gossamer curtains she saw vaguely human curves.   
  
It smashed into Betty like a freight train.   
  
She recognized those houses. There was the McCoy house. Then the Mantle’s backyard. Even Thornhill.    
  
There was Cheryl in a state of obliviousness, barely visible through a frosted windowpane. There was Reggie lying peacefully in the grass of his backyard, completely oblivious.   
  
She felt like someone was twisting a knife at the base of her spine.   
  
Was this what Jughead was doing when he disappeared? Prowling about people’s houses? Taking pictures?   
  
It must have lasted two seconds. Jughead’s eyes flashed down to the table, and he noticed the folder. Betty saw the naked terror cross his face for a moment. Then he composed himself, snatched up the folder and the photographs, and jammed them back into his bag.   
  
“I couldn’t find the notes,” Jughead said coolly.   
  
Archie returned from the trash can.   
  
“Any luck?” he chirped.   
  
Betty shook. Her teeth actually chattered. She managed to hold it in for another ten minutes, and then excused herself, told the nurse she was sick, and went home early.   
  
She lay in bed until the sun went down, unable to muster the energy to lick her chapped lips. Maybe she was wrong. She saw the photographs for a split second. She was paranoid. It ran in the Cooper family, didn’t it? Everyone knew that. Jughead wouldn’t do that. He just wouldn’t.   
  
But she knew what she saw, didn’t she?    
  
Didn’t she?   



	3. the American dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which future patterns of behavior are established

**Montgomery, USA**

**1984—ten hours ago**

“I finished high school with…uh…great panache,” Jughead smiled. “Largely thanks to Sheriff Keller.”

Toni’s eyes flickered to her tape recorder. She hoped there was plenty of room left.

“That’s right. I think you told me that story. You were arrested, weren’t you?” She couldn’t help but grin. She tried—often—to remind herself that Jughead was a bad person. They didn’t get much worse, really. But there was an undeniable charm to him, even if it was subtle.

It wasn’t a flagrant, movie star kind of charm that made you weak in the knees.

He seemed like your sly, goofy, bookish friend with a heart of gold and without a violent impulse in his head.

“Well…now you’ve spoiled it,” Jughead said.

“Well…tell us again, anyway.” She gestured to the recorder. “For the sake of my readers.”

“It’s not the most flattering story.”

“Jughead, with all due respect; how many of your stories  _ are  _ flattering?”

“I like to think my prison break was rather…cinematic,” he grinned. “It took them four months to scoop me back up. That’s worth bragging about, isn’t it?”

Toni stretched her lips into a thin line.

“Maybe if you hadn’t spent those four months of freedom  _ killing people _ .”

He sucked his teeth.

“Low blow. So, you wanted to hear the arrest story?”  _ Now  _ he was eager to shift the course of the conversation.

Toni spread her arms.

“Lay it on me.”

“Of course, like all stories, it’s got to be placed into its proper context. Which, in this case, is the end of high school and the beginning of the end.”

“Christ, have you always talked like a satirical magazine?”

He shrugged.

“When I was a kid I’d roll blunts out of pages from  _ MAD _ . Might’ve seeped into my bloodstream.”

* * *

 

 

**Riverdale, USA**

**1972**

Jughead greeted the last days of high school with a deep, gnawing kind of dread.

It didn’t appear to him like the gates of opportunity being flung open, but rather like _he_ was being flung out into a cruel and hungry world entirely unprepared.

Or worse, maybe he  _ was  _ prepared.

His friends buzzed with excitement.

The Coopers had long ago set aside a college fund for both their daughters. Polly was already off attending some university in Colorado. God knew where Betty would end up, but it would be somewhere exclusive and prestigious, no doubt. Her scholarships would cover what the fund couldn’t.

Fred Andrews, proud, hard-working father he was, managed to scrounge up enough cash to send his son off for two semesters of university. After that, Archie would get a job, Fred would contribute what he could, and they would work it out from there.

Veronica was weighing her options, though she had enough money to take her pick.

Jughead had no such prospects. He breezed through Riverdale High’s workload, but he never had the drive or the desire to distinguish himself in the way that drew an admissions officer’s attention. Besides the school paper, there were no clubs or extracurricular activities he could boast of. Nothing to indicate he’d ever done more than the bare minimum to pass. Which was just as well, since he hadn’t.

He’d never get a scholarship juicy enough to cover all expenses, and his father didn’t have a dime to contribute, even if he’d wanted to.

Jughead shoved it all out of his mind.

He sat cross-legged in the old projection booth over the Twilight drive-in. The place was empty. There was not a single car in the lot. Just the way he liked it. His Polaroids shone on the floor before him, lined up in neat rows of five.

He had nearly one hundred of them, by the last count.

They were beautiful. His trophies. They  _ had  _ been, at least. He went through them tenderly, one by one. There was a wide-shot view of Thornhill from the east. There was a shot of Cheryl lying in bed, all but undressed, and just barely hidden from the keen camera by those troublesome curtains. There was Moose Mason stepping out onto his porch, chest bared, a cigarette in hand.

Jughead had started almost a year ago now. It was the natural progression from his ‘following’. 

He followed Ginger Lopez to her doorstep once. Hovering behind a verdant oleander bush, he watched as she slipped in through the front door and locked it behind her. He knew her parents weren’t home. He fixated on the windows, hoping for a flash of movement. But they were all shuttered tight. Jughead ground his teeth. He choked down the same burning dissatisfaction that plagued him after every one of his ‘hunts’.

It was  _ over.  _ His quarry was gone and he could follow them no further and he could  _ do  _ nothing else. It infuriated him. It made him feel like a caged beast, unable to give free reign to his impulses.

So he began to take pictures. It helped, a little bit. It preserved his little game for memory. He could revisit it when he needed a little taste of that thrill.

But now high school was ending. Everything—what little there was—was crumbling. He was angry, and in a way, cornered. And now the pictures didn’t satisfy him, either.

Jughead brooded and grumbled. He attended the last few days of school with a perpetual gloom about him.

“What’s wrong, Juggie?” Betty asked him, but her usual concern was tempered by something else. She’d grown more distant. She was afraid of him, now.

He wondered if she’d caught a glimpse of his Polaroids that day in the courtyard.

He supposed it didn’t matter, anymore.

“I’m just nervous.”

And he was.

Two weeks before graduation he took himself to Riverdale’s resident sporting goods store with a few crumpled bills filched from Pop’s. Jughead bought a big, shining bowie knife. The salesman side-eyed the boy and his great, giddy smile.

Jughead kept himself in the moment. He tried not to think of  _ why  _ he was buying the knife. He wasn’t sure he even  _ knew _ . He was just doing it.

He spent the rest of the day in the Twilight, carving names and symbols into the rickety wooden walls. He paced and fretted and stabbed the knife at the air.

Archie and Betty dropped by Sunnyside to look for him, and then shortly departed when confronted by an incoherent FP.

Jughead didn’t know that.

He took the Polaroids out into the empty lot behind the Twilight and burned them. They weren’t doing it anymore.

That night, he dressed himself in all black. He wrapped a length of dark cloth around his mouth and nose, leaving only his eyes and hair exposed.

He disappeared into the maples and birch trees of Fox Forest, edging around the outskirts of the town with singular precision. He knew this way. He’d taken it a dozen times before.

Treading over old footpaths or cutting through thickets, he cleared a mile of forest in a few minutes and emerged from the wood before a row of pretty, middle-class houses. 

He zeroed in on one in particular. He hadn’t been by in a while.

The Klump house was a two story red brick, with a sightly chimney and a rustic, country air. A backyard picket fence bordered the Eversgreen Forest on the southern side. Jughead had mapped out the house’s floor plan on his previous visits. He knew Midge’s room was in the rear, facing the woods. Her parents’ room was further forward, their window opening out onto the street.  

Jughead crept into the branches of an old pine tree. One of the groaning limbs stretched out over the backyard at an angle and offered a nearly perfect view of both bedrooms. He shimmied along the bough, careful not to snag anything, until he reached a position that was forward enough for his purposes, but still comfortably hidden in the leaves. 

The lights were on inside.

Mr. and Mrs. Klump’s bedroom was empty. The curtains were open, and he could make out the bed, the closet, and a mirror on the far wall. He figured they were downstairs.

Their daughter’s bedroom was shuttered, much to his chagrin.

Then the shutters snapped up, and the dark shape of Midge herself appeared in the window, framed in a halo of light. 

For a moment, he feared he might be spotted. But even though she was looking directly out into the yard, she made no sign that she saw anything out of the ordinary.

Jughead relaxed.

For the next two hours or so, he just watched.

Mr. and Mrs. Klump finally entered their room. Mrs. Klump slipped into bed while her husband rummaged through the closet for something. He could see their mouths moving, but could hear nothing.

He whispered to himself. 

He fingered the grip of his knife.

Midge took a call. She talked for a while. Jughead watched her move with easy, youthful fluidity. Completely carefree. And oblivious. Her cheeks went rosy at something on the phone.

Jughead’s chest burned. Here was that sense again—the sense of being stonewalled, the lack of release. Watching didn’t cut it anymore.

He unsheathed his knife, running now on a cocktail of adrenaline and unconscious instinct.

He waited, until Midge lay down on her bed, facing away from the window, lost in her conversation. Then he dropped down from the branch. His boots hit the grass with a quiet, wet  _ thump _ .

The lawn was dark, save for the nebulous pools of light cast from the windows. Jughead crept along the fence, sticking to the shadows. He tucked the knife against his leg to hide its glimmer.

Something shifted in the window above him.

He tried to dash from one sliver of darkness to the next.

Midge threw her window open.

Jughead passed under the glow of a patio light. He turned his head. She screamed. His heart stopped. His legs froze. Their gazes met for a brief moment. Then he regained control of himself and sprinted away, bounding over the fence, tearing across yards and hedges with a speed he did not think himself capable of.

By the time Mr. Klump burst out through the back door, a half-cocked shotgun in his right hand, Jughead was two blocks away.

He slowed his heartbeat, stopped running, and ripped the homespun mask from his face.

Jughead lessened his stride and tried to make out that he was simply out for a nighttime stroll, as he often was. He secreted his knife away. His spine tingled.

He’d gotten another four blocks before the flashing lights deluged him. He spun around, throwing a hand over his face. A police cruiser crept closer. He debated running again, and decided against it. He pulled his gloves off and stuffed them into his pockets.

The car pulled up alongside him. With his poor luck, it was not even one of Keller’s deputies, but the sheriff himself. The window rolled down.

“What are you doing, son?”

Jughead smiled awkwardly.

“Just out for a walk, sheriff. Taking in the night air, enjoying God’s good earth, you know.”

Keller looked him over, surely observing that the boy was dressed in all black, from head to toe. He killed the engine, opened the door, and stepped out. Jughead backed away from him. The sheriff moved closer.

“Mhmm. You know, we got a call from Mr. and Mrs. Klump just a few minutes ago. They reported a prowler in their backyard. Dressed all in black. Would you happen to know anything about that? Maybe…seen somebody run by?”

Jughead sucked in a breath. They had nothing on him. They couldn’t prove anything.

“Haven’t seen anything. I haven’t even been by their house.”

Keller put a hand on his hip.

“Why are you wearing all black?”

“Have you ever known me to wear anything else?”

Keller’s eyes told that he most certainly believed Jughead to be the prowler in question.

“Is your father home?”

Jughead scowled.

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you come down to the station with me, son?”

The arrest was humiliating. The sheriff marched Jughead through the front doors of Riverdale’s police station, hands cuffed behind his back. He kept his head low, not keen to meet the mocking stares of Keller’s deputies.

He was very shortly patted down. The knife and the gloves were easily discovered.

“What’s the story here?” Keller questioned.

“It’s my knife. So what?”

“Why are you carrying it around when you’re out for a walk?”

Jughead refused to budge as Keller hauled him into the interrogation chamber and pressed him to admit he had been in the Klump family’s backyard. The boy was not afraid, merely furious. He deflected the policeman’s every query and threat with some ready-made bit of mockery.

“What were you trying to do, Jughead? Sneak a peek through Midge’s window? I get it; boys will be boys. Look, son. This isn’t exactly a serious crime. Just admit what you did, and we’ll have you out of here by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well, I can’t go and perjure myself,” Jughead replied.

So he spent the night in a cell, pacing and growling and wishing he could take back his knife and slit every policeman in the station from navel to chin.

In the morning, Sheriff Keller returned and brought him breakfast. Jughead pushed it aside and glared through the bars. Keller seemed less than impressed.

“We couldn’t find your father.”

“No shit. He’s passed out in the bathroom of the Wyrm or else he finally got his dumb ass stabbed to death by a Ghoulie.”

Keller sighed.

“So then—“

“Don’t I get a phone call?” Jughead snapped.

He called the Andrews house. Archie picked up, and Jughead explained that Sheriff Keller was railroading him.

Twenty minutes later, Fred Andrews and his son stormed into the police station, determined to secure Jughead’s freedom.

“What are you holding him for, Tom?” Fred demanded.

“We think he was peeping on the Klump—“

“Bullshit!” Archie grumbled. The boy had grown bigger and broader, and was now a match for Keller in height. “Jug wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“Well,” Keller began. “W—“

“Do you have any proof?” Fred asked.

Keller stared for a moment. He glowered.

“No, not exactly.”

“Then you’ve got to release him, don’t you?”

The sheriff haggled for a few minutes more, but he knew he was beaten. He unlocked the cell door and shot Jughead a withering stare. The boy checked, made sure that the Andrews men were not looking, and then flashed Keller a cruel, knowing, victorious little smile.

Jughead spent the morning at Archie’s house, and ate a hearty breakfast, and privately reveled in his little triumph over the Riverdale Police Department.

When Betty dropped by an hour or two later, asking what had happened, Archie sprang into action and said that Sheriff Keller erroneously believed Jughead was “creeping around people’s backyards at night.” He spoke to signal his absolute disdain for such an accusation.

Jughead caught Betty’s eye.

Something lurked there. It wasn’t sympathy. It was suspicion.

He suppressed the urge to snarl. She was losing her trust in him. And that did not make him happy.

“I’m sorry, Juggie,” Betty said. ‘ _ But you  _ didn’t  _ do it, did you?’  _ was the unspoken postscript.

He said as much, the next day at school, as their classmates cleared out their lockers and rid themselves of textbooks.

“You know I  _ didn’t  _ do it, right Betty?”

They traipsed down the school’s front steps. It was the first week of May. The sun was hot, but it was past high noon, so there was abundant shade.

“Of course, Jughead,” she assured him, touching his arm.

He smiled, for a moment certain again that she  _ did  _ trust him. She  _ should not _ , of course, but he wanted her to.

“Okay. Good.”

They took themselves to Pop’s, where the eponymous proprietor brought them their usual without their even asking.

“On the house,” Pop beamed. “Happy graduation.”

“Not just  _ yet _ , Pop,” Jughead clarified. “We’ve still got a few more days to forge through.”

Pop nodded.

Jughead ate his hamburger slowly, with hesitant, nibbling bites. He left the milkshake untouched.

“What’s wrong, Jug? You’re not putting it away like usual.”

He set his face, betraying nothing.

“Betty, are you afraid?”

“Of what? School ending?”

“Well…in a few words, yeah.”

Betty sucked in a breath and turned to look out the windows. The train rolled by Pop’s.

“I’m nervous,” Betty said, with a shaky smile on her lips. “But…I’m excited too, you know. To finally get out there. College…and everything.” She shrugged, almost apologetically.

Jughead held back a scowl.

“Right. Out there.”

“I know you’re going to miss everyone.”

More than any particular person, he was going to miss this  _ world _ . This stable little world that he’d learned to navigate, and manipulate. Now it was all crumbling, and he was going to have to start over. He was going to have to build a world he could control and manage from the ground up. And it wasn’t the world of college parties and final exams and comfortable middle class mediocrity that awaited his friends.

“More than you know, Betts,” he said, covering her hand with his.

She smiled. He threw forward a hollow smile.

Howling, sweeping fury pounded in his chest. That was one of the few emotions that he  _ really  _ felt, deep and heavy. Fury, lust, and a tinny, empty, yearning feeling he couldn’t quite put a name to.

He wasn’t sure if he felt love. How could he? He couldn’t compare it to anyone else’s experience of ‘love’.

“We’ll see each other all the time,” Betty promised.

“I’ll be banging down your dorm door,” he laughed.

They finished their meal, and kissed. Betty went home. Jughead heard her say there was some last minute paperwork to fill out. Something like that. He wasn’t really listening.

* * *

**Montgomery, USA**

**1984—ten hours ago**

“And then?” Toni asked.

“And then nothing. We graduated. Archie and Betty were gone in a few weeks.” Jughead spread his hands out on the table. The demonstrators outside grew louder. “Christ, are those people  _ ever  _ going to shut up?”

“I don’t think th—“

“Not until I’m dead, right?” he grinned. “Yeah, they’ll shut up, then. And I can finally get some peace and quiet.”

“Do you believe in an afterlife?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘afterlife’,” he drawled.

“Well…how many different things can I mean?” Toni asked. “Do you believe consciousness survives death?” She felt a weird chill go down her spine. It was so odd to be sitting across from a man who would be dead so soon. Most people didn’t have the burden—or the luxury—of knowing the time and manner of their demise.

She wasn’t afraid of much. She’d had a rough childhood. She’d seen people hurt and worse. But she couldn’t imagine keeping her composure before the metaphorical gallows.

“I don’t believe in some fluffy field of clouds where good boys go to praise God forever. Is there some kind of void in the universe where our…essences or whatever go to languish in misery for all eternity?” he shrugged. “I can believe that.”

Toni nodded. She stuck her tongue into her cheek.

“Always the pessimist,” she said. He shrugged again. “So—“ she went on. “After Archie and Betty got out of town—“

“So did I,” he cut in. “I sure as hell wasn’t sticking around when I turned 18.”

“So where did you go?” Toni gestured to the tape recorder, as if to remind him this was for posterity, not the satisfaction of her curiosity.

“Out.”

* * *

**Riverdale, USA**

**1972**

“Where the hell are you going?” FP demanded. He was stone cold sober.

Jughead stood up, letting his travel bag alone.

“I’m leaving, dad,” he said with a sort of even, just-the-facts tone. Then he resumed packing.

FP stormed closer.

“Leaving  _ where _ ?”

“Somewhere that isn’t Riverdale.”

FP grabbed his son by the bicep and jerked him upright. Jughead wrenched his arm away.

“You aren’t going  _ anywhere _ !” FP growled.

“No. I am.”

FP gripped him by the shoulders and slammed his son into the trailer’s rickety wall. The entire mobile home shuddered. Jughead barely flinched.

“First your mother and your sister leave, now—“

“They left because of you,” Jughead said, almost gently. “And that’s why I’m leaving, too.”

For a moment, his father’s face changed. His lips twitched. His eyes seemed to dim. Maybe there were tears there. Jughead wanted to sneer. Good. The bastard deserved to suffer. And he knew just what to say to needle at his conscience.

“Y—“

“What are you going to do,  _ FP _ ,” Jughead spat. “Hit me? Again?” he sneered.

FP stumbled back. And then he seemed to shrink. The powerful, angry man Jughead knew was suddenly frail and broken. For the first time in his life, he felt bigger than his father. And he liked it.

“Jughead—“ FP tried one more time.

Jughead opened the trailer door with a click. It was the last time he would ever hear that sound.

“Goodbye,” he said. And this time, he couldn’t resist the smile. “Enjoy what’s left of your…uh…let’s call this a  _ life _ .”

And then he left.

He considered catching a bus for Toledo. He decided he didn’t really want to see his mother. Maybe not ever again. He washed his hands of all this.

Instead, he bought a ticket bound for Boston.

* * *

 

**Thornhill, USA**

**1984—four months ago**

Toni really wasn’t sure what to expect from someone with the name ‘Cheryl Blossom’. A flamboyant personality, maybe? Someone who adored the limelight and made no attempt to hide that fact?

In any case, that was exactly what she found.

Even her house was criminally ostentatious.

Toni wondered if the sprawling gothic mansion ( _ with its own cemetery)  _ was purposefully built to inspire terror. The windows were dark, save for the reflected moonlight that made them look like flickering eyes. The gate loomed over her. She felt very small.

Gathering her courage, Toni stepped up to the intercom. She hit the button.

“Uh…hello?”

“Hello,” came a prim, clipped voice. “Who’s on my grounds?”

“It’s…me,” Toni said hesitantly. “The…I’m interviewing you.”

“Ah, yes! Of  _ course _ ! Come right in,” the voice cooed, sticky-sweet.

The gate swung open. Toni ambled up the long, winding footpath to the front door. Before she could knock, the door swung open.

Cheryl managed to be both drop-dead gorgeous and terrifying at the same time. She stretched out a delicate, perfectly manicured hand. Toni took it tentatively.

“Toni Topaz. Pleased to meet you.”

“ _ Au chante _ . Cheryl Blossom, and the pleasure is  _ all mine _ .” She waved her guest into the house.

“Nice place,” Toni muttered. A single staircase sprouted out of the foyer and crept up to the second floor landing. Beyond that, a cavernous hallway stretched off into darkness like the gullet of some great beast.

“Understatement, I’d say. But…I appreciate the sentiment.” Cheryl led her deeper into the old manor.

“Thanks for agreeing to the interview,” Toni offered in a vain attempt to lighten the mood.

“Oh, it was  _ agony  _ deciding who I was going to grant this  _ exclusive  _ interview to,” Cheryl sighed. “Except…all the others are writing articles, and you’re writing a  _ book _ . Articles are transient, but books stick around.”

“That they do.”

Cheryl escorted her into a parlor, offered her a seat, and mixed them both drinks.

“So! Where shall we begin?”

Toni craned her head around, still reeling with the size and ambience of the house.

“You live here  _ alone _ ?”

As if on cue, a figure materialized out of the gloom of a nearby hallway. Toni nearly dropped dead from shock. It was a young man with Cheryl’s ivory skin and bright ginger hair. He stretched his full lips thin and waved mechanically.

“Oh, that’s Jason. My brother.”

Jason disappeared back into the hall without a word.

“Right, right. Okay. You and your brother live here alone?”

Cheryl shrugged.

“Well, we have help come on weekends to take care of the less…savory duties around here. But besides that…”

“And how did you uh…come into it?”

“Oh, when mommy and daddy died in that  _ tragic  _ maple tree tapping accident…”

“I’m sorry, they died in a wh—did you—never mind, I’m being nosey. Let’s stay on track,” Toni affected a smile. She had absolutely no reason to doubt these two had murdered their parents for the house and the family fortune, but this didn’t seem a prudent time to suggest such a thing.

“Of course! Naturally, you want to know about me and my relationship to that  _ blood-drenched monster,  _ Jones.”

“Precisely.” Toni settled her heavy tape recorder on the coffee table between them. “When I turn this on, our interview will have officially begun. Sound good?”

“Fantastic, actually,” Cheryl beamed.

Toni hit ‘record’.

“So,” she began. “I know we were in Alabama together, but I don’t believe I spoke to you, then. Nor did you give your story to anyone but the jury.”

“Correct,” Cheryl drawled. “And that was an…abridged version. But I’m glad to have done my part to see to it that Jughead Jones walks the Green Mile to Old Sparky and  _ fries _ .”

“Colorful,” Toni said dryly. “Anyway, you served as a witness for the prosecution, yes? I know the answer’s yes, just for the record…” she motions to the tape.

“Correct.”

“Which means of course, you must have witnessed something relevant to Jones’ trial.”

“Plenty. But above all, one incident. Less ‘witnessed’ and more ‘experienced’,” she seethed, sounding out every syllable.

“And this incident…”

“Well let me relate it to you, Miss Topaz.”

* * *

**I-95, USA**

**1976**

“Son of a—come  _ on _ !” Cheryl half roared, half wept. She pounded a fist onto the hood of her car. The Cadillac’s frame shook.

Oh, yes, it was a  _ Cadillac _ .

It was supposed to look nice, but now that was about  _ all  _ it was doing. It certainly wasn’t going to  _ get  _ her anywhere. Cheryl kicked the wheel and then recoiled in pain. She clenched her fists and let out a primal scream of rage and impotence.

The night sky overhead was thick, starless and moonless. Thunder rumbled in the clouds and threatened rain.

Jason was right. She shouldn’t have stayed out so late. But damn it, she had just secured a new contract. Didn’t she deserve to celebrate a little? Of course she did. She was Cheryl Blossom.

She’d known for some time the Cadillac was having engine trouble, but the only people at the party willing to give her a ride had been horny idiots trying to feel her up or incompetents that she didn’t trust to operate a tricycle.

So she’d taken her chances. And now she was paying the price for it.

Cheryl lifted the hood. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know the next thing about cars. But she had to feel like she was doing something. She touched a random component and recoiled at the burning hot metal.

“‘Standard of the World!’” she seethed.

The thunder overhead growled louder.

But she couldn’t hitchhike like some… _ stranded motorist _ .

She’d already turned down two cars that had stopped by and offered a ride.

Now, she saw a third cresting the hill in the distance.

The road was long and deserted. Forest flanked it on both sides. She had not seen a gas station or a truck stop in miles before the engine gave out. If she tried to walk anywhere she’d probably drop dead long before she reached any human habitation.

The car crept closer. Cheryl squinted into the darkness.

As the headlights swept over her, she made out the vehicle’s color and shape. It was a Pontiac, she knew that much. Black. It slowed and coasted to a stop next to her and her pitiful, several-thousand dollar hunk of metal.

She tried to peer into the driver’s seat. The window rolled down.

“Holy shit,” the driver half-laughed. It was an eminently familiar voice, but she couldn’t quite jog her memory. Which infuriated her. “Do mine eyes deceive me, or is that Cheryl Marjorie Blossom at the side of the road, there?”

Cheryl stepped closer, cautiously.

“And who might  _ you  _ be?” she demanded, crossing her arms.

The driver leaned towards her. She caught a dazzling white smile. A handsomely slight face. Curls of dark hair. A pair of friendly blue eyes.

“Guess,” the man drawled.

“Wh—Jughead Jones? Is that you?”

“None other,” he replied, still smiling.

Cheryl scoffed.

“Well, I’m utterly shocked to see you in a vehicle that is neither falling apart nor stolen. I  _ assume _ .”

“It’s been a little while since high school,” Jughead replied, unmoved. “You seem to be in a bit of a fix, by the way.”

“I don’t  _ need  _ any help, if that’s what you’re driving at,” Cheryl said.

“Looks a little like you do.”

Cheryl rolled her eyes, but she did and said nothing as Jughead stepped out of his car and slammed the door shut. He swaggered over to her Cadillac. He was dressed in all shades of grey and black, just like in in school. She could barely see the bastard in the dark.

“It just…broke down,” she said, swallowing a bit of her pride. “Can you…give me a jump or something?

Jughead flipped the hood. He peered into the car’s inner workings. He sucked his teeth, and Cheryl thought she caught a flash of a smile.

“Yeah…the engine’s fucked.”

Cheryl moaned in horror and dismay. 

Of course, it seemed strange that he could determine that with barely a two-second glance, almost as if he’d had that diagnosis prepared, but what did she know?

“So, what? I’m now the proud owner of a seven-thousand dollar automobile that can’t  _ move _ ?”

Jughead shrugged.

“Well…maybe a good mechanic can do something with the right tools. But as of now…there’s not much to be done.”

“So  _ now  _ what?” she demanded, adopting the pose he and every other denizen of Riverdale High had learned to fear back in the day. Arms crossed, lips pursed, hair tossed over her shoulder, hip cocked.

Jughead grinned now, widely.

“Do you still live in the House of Usher? I could give you a lift. If…you’re so inclined.”

“Do I—the day that I accept a ride from you—“

He opened his passenger door.

“If you’d prefer, you can spend the night here next to your auto _ im _ mobile, in the dark, surrounded by forest, and probably in the pouring rain.” He pointed up at the turbulent sky.

Cheryl weighed her options. No, she did  _ not  _ want to spend any more time alone out here.

And anyway, Jones didn’t seem exactly as weird as he had in school. The awkward mannerisms and social ineptitude were gone. He seemed much more assured of himself now. Less serpentine. Friendlier. Less off-putting, in short.

She slipped into the passenger seat. Jughead’s smile was much wider now. He got back into the car and started the engine. They tore off down the road. Her car faded into the distance.

“If you think this is some kind of belated revenge for high school…” she began.

“Revenge? Revenge for  _ what _ ?” he smirked. “What have  _ you  _ ever done to  _ me  _ that might ever  _ possibly  _ make me upset?”

She opened her mouth. Then, despite herself, giggled.

“I’m sorry, okay? And you were right—high school was a while ago.”

“A while ago indeed.”

Jughead rolled his window down, pulled a cigarette, and lit it up.

“Is that a cigarette or a spliff?” Cheryl asked.

He blew a cloud of smoke out the window and laughed.

“A spliff? Do I look like a fucking flower child to you, Cheryl?”

Again, she laughed.

“Cigarette or spliff—care to share?” He wordlessly produced another cigarette and handed it to her. Then he lit it. “Such a gentleman,” she said.

“I’m going the right way? To Thornhill.”

“Yeah,” Cheryl confirmed. “Just keep going straight. I’ll tell you when to turn.”

“I’m sure you will,” he said.

She wasn’t sure what that meant.

“So what do you  _ do  _ these days? Considering you’re  _ far  _ too cultured and mature to ever consider smoking pot?”

Jughead beamed.

“I uh…I help manage a construction firm in Norfolk, actually. I’ll own it once the current owner finally kicks the bucket. Then I’ll have enough cash to just laze around writing all day.”

“And how’d you weasel your way into  _ that  _ position?”

“After I left Riverdale, all I really knew was construction, thanks to my piece-of-shit father. So I worked my way up from the bottom. It’s a real American success story.”

“Where’s your dad, now?”

Jughead chuckled.

“Fun story, actually. The bastard finally died last year. Finally pushed his liver a step too far. Good riddance.” Jughead gave a mock salute.

Cheryl blanched. She knew FP Jones had been callous and sometimes cruel, but that was  _ remarkably  _ cold.

As if to celebrate his father’s end, Jughead switched the radio on. He cycled through stations until he found one he liked, and when he did, he smiled big and sat back.

“I, ah…I see.”

“And you? Silver spoon opened most doors, I assume?”

“I got through college. And on  _ my own merits _ .”

“Which college?”

“Sarah Lawrence.”

“And then?”

“Now I help Jason manage the family business.”

Jughead puffed on his cigarette.

“What happened to Clifford?”

“Mother and father are both gone,” Cheryl said. “And…truth be told, I’m not so broken up about that, either.”

Creedence Clearwater Revival blared through the speakers.

_ I see a bad moon arising _

_ I see trouble on the way… _

_ “ _ Well, here’s to dead parents,” Jughead grinned. He raised his cigarette.

It was an awful joke, but she laughed.

“You’re not quite as insufferable as you were in high school,” she admitted. Even as she said it, she caught a glimmer of something under Jughead’s seat. She tried to get a closer look without making it obvious. It was something metallic and angular. They passed under a gap in the clouds overhead, and a beam of moonlight washed the car. In the brief glow, she saw clearly. It was a knife.

The skin on Cheryl’s arms and neck prickled.

Jughead hummed along to the radio, beating his hands on the steering wheel.

They came up on the turn she needed.

“Turn here,” Cheryl said.

He swept right past it and continued on.

“You missed the  _ turn _ ,” she snapped, irritated.

“I’m going around. On the way here, I saw some kind of obstruction on the road back there. You know, cops or construction or something.”

She didn’t believe him. Her stomach turned.

Ten minutes later, he took another turn. This one was onto a smaller road. Narrower. It was a one-way, heading deeper into the woods.

“Jughead— _ where  _ are we going?” She demanded. “I  _ know  _ you can’t get to my house from here.”

He didn’t respond.

“Bad Moon Rising” blared on.

“ _ Jughead!”  _ she snapped, again with no response.

Then there was  _ another  _ turn, onto a road that was little more than a footpath, unpaved and marred by stones and gnarled roots. The car bounced and rattled along the little trail. Cheryl’s heart beat wildly in her chest. She tried to tear her eyes from the gleam of the knife under the driver’s seat.

“Look, this  _ isn’t funny _ !” she said, her voice rising.

He said nothing.

They reached the end of the little path. It was a dead end. Beyond, there was only forest. Deep, dark, impenetrable forest. The car’s headlights shut off. Jughead turned to her. There was an awful, absolutely horrific gleam in his eye. A chill settled in the pit of her stomach and paralyzed her limbs.

“When do you think someone last came to the end of this road?” Jughead drawled. “Well,” he laughed. “Actually, I was here yesterday. Just…scoping it out, you know. But before that? Months. Years, maybe.”

Cheryl pressed herself back against the passenger door.

“ _ Jones!”  _ she cried, practically screaming now. “This isn’t a joke,  _ take me home! _ ”

“Well, you’re right on one count. This isn’t a joke.” He reached under his seat. Cheryl saw his hand close around the knife. Her heart almost stopped. She felt tears building in the corners of her eyes. This  _ was  _ a joke. Had to be.

They remained there for a second, locked in their places. The tears trickled down her cheeks. Her entire body trembled.

He didn’t retrieve the knife. He left it under the seat, and at last pulled his hand back, empty. He sighed and leaned back against the headrest, remaining there for a while. His eyes closed.

Slowly, Cheryl’s breathing and her heartbeat fell.

In another few minutes, Jughead started the car up again.

There was no smile on his face; no big, blooming grin that would tell her it had all been some twisted prank to repay her high school cruelties. His face was blank.

Neither spoke a word. He took the turn he should have in the first place. As Cheryl became convinced he was, in fact, taking her to Thornhill her terror gave way to fury.

“You  _ son of a bitch _ !” she snarled. “You  _ sick bastard!  _ You think this is  _ funny _ ?”

He held his tongue.

“Fuck you!” She shouted.

By the time they pulled up to Thornhill, Cheryl was ready to punch him.

So she socked him in the shoulder. Hard. He hardly flinched.

“Just get out,” he said. "You're welcome for the ride."

She gladly complied, and slammed the door with such force the entire car shook.

“Prick!” she spit. He still did not deign to look at her.

The engine roared and the car was gone into the night before she could muster up another insult.

Cheryl stumbled into the house, where Jason met her with a barrage of “Where were you?” and “I was getting worried”. His voice died off when he saw the tears in her eyes.

She told him it was only the stress and the inconvenience of having the car break down on her along a deserted country road. He was satisfied with that.

He asked how she got home. She said she’d gotten a ride.

Then she went to bed.

In a few days time, it was all but forgotten.

A month later it started.

Cheryl picked up the morning paper on the way out. The story wasn’t a headline, but it was still front-page news.

_ Norfolk Woman Vanishes _

Cheryl scanned the story briefly along with her light breakfast.

_ 20 years old…Annie Phillips…med student…last seen on the night of October 22 _ _ nd _ _ …leaving a local restaurant…friends say she never arrived at… _

She put it out of her mind quickly. People went missing all the time. She had more pertinent things to worry about.

A week later it happened again. Closer to home this time.

_ Oswego Girl Disappears. _

_ Young couple vanishes from Rhode Island park. _

Then another. And another. Soon, the Eastern Seaboard was plastered over with missing person posters. Bright, pretty, handsome smiling faces stared out over those awful words:  _ Have you seen me? _

It became clear something worse than a spate of runaways was in the offing here.

People didn’t like to go outside anymore unless they were in pairs or groups. After dark, they didn’t like to go outside at all.

As she stepped out of the front door one evening, Jason called to her from the stairs and warned her to be careful, and to call him as soon as she got where she was going. And that made it real.

Still, she thought nothing of Jughead Jones.

It took longer than it should have for authorities to realize the vanishings were all connected, by dint of the fact they occurred up and down the coast from Maine to Vermont to Massachusetts to New York, under the purview of a dozen different police departments.

A few days after the FBI was called in, three of the girls and two of the boys were found. Not by one of the countless search parties or even by a luckless hunter tramping through the woods, but rather by a family dog, who returned to the campsite with a human finger in his mouth.

The elements and wild beasts had done their work. All investigators could determine was that they had been stabbed to death, probably very soon after their disappearances.

As for the others, of whom there were now eight, no trace was found.

The press, with that tastelessness peculiar to journalists, began calling him ‘ _ the Huntsman’, _ after police had determined most of the victims were slain with a hunter's Bowie knife. 

Cheryl thought little of it—except maybe she looked over her shoulder a bit more often—until the evening she spent at a lavish fundraiser in New York. It was an optics thing for Blossom Maple Farms, and she couldn’t quite recall what they were meant to be raising funds  _ for _ . Cancer, maybe?

The TV buzzed on the wall.

The guy next to her turned and leered.

“Buy you a drink?” he asked.

“Nope,” she replied.

He was satisfied for a moment. Then he tried again.

“You ever get scared, walking around at night?”

Cheryl scowled.

“No? Why should I?”

“Pretty thing like you? That killer would snap you right up.” He gestured to the television, where a leathery old policeman announced the latest vanishing to a crowd of clamoring reporters. It was Maine, this time.

“ _ Her car was found on a road off I-95. We suspect she broke down and was picked up by someone. If anyone has  _ any  _ information that may lead to her safe return, please contact…”  _ There was no conviction in his voice, because everyone knew there would be no “safe return”. She was gone, like all the others.

The image of a car, sitting alone by the side of a dark highway, needled at Cheryl. Something cloudy and forgotten surfaced at the back of her mind.

“Wait…”she mumbled to herself.

“Why don’t I walk you to your car?” the lout next to her said.

She stood.

“I’ll take my chances with the Huntsman.”

Cheryl drove home early. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and obsessively checked and rechecked the gas meter. It was full. She checked it again.

The encounter with Jones that night had been over a year ago. She’d put it out of her head until now.

He’d had a knife under his seat. He’d given her that awful look.

No—Jones was a creep and a bastard, but he wasn’t a killer.

But if he was?

She stumbled in through the front door. Jason wasn’t home. Thornhill felt as big and frightening as it had when she was a small girl.

Cheryl plucked the phone from the receiver, and punched in the number. Three rings.

“Hello? Yes, who do I speak to regarding the uh…the disappearances? Yes…yes.  _ Of course _ . I have a tip. It’s a person who—yes. His name is…get your pen ready…Forsythe Pendleton Jones. The third. I’m— _ yes,  _ I’m serious. I  _ assume  _ he was born with that name. Fine. Thank you.”

She didn’t sleep well that night. 


	4. brought to bay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which the authorities close in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone who was reading this and enjoying it: sorry for the sudden and unexplained updating hiatus. I honestly have no idea why it happened, considering I've had the whole thing finished for months. Just extreme sloth I guess :/

** Montgomery, USA **

_**1984—nine hours ago**   _

“Cheryl. Fucking. Blossom,” Jughead tapped out each syllable of her name on the table.

“I’ve met her,” Toni said.

“Yeah? She’s a real class act, isn’t she?”

“She is a…colorful person,” Toni said. She winced at the memory.

“She spent all of high school making sure I know how much _better_ than me she was. And to top it all off?” He spreads his hands. ”She sends me to the electric chair. A real coup de grace.”

Toni grimaced. She wasn’t sure if she ought to laugh at that.

“Her testimony was uh…harrowing, but I’m not sure it’s what cinched the jury’s—“

“I meant her little tip to the police.”

Toni was in awe. He seemed legitimately angry. As if he could conceive of no _possible_ reason why anyone would conspire his downfall. He had to have some concept of justice, didn’t he? It wasn’t as if Cheryl had—or anyone else for that matter—had condemned him out of spite.

“Well…you did try to kill her,” Toni said.

“If I’d wanted to kill her, I could have,” Jughead snapped.

“Anyway…at the time Cheryl gave that…tip, where were you?”

“I was living _my_ American dream.”

* * *

**Toledo, USA**

_**1977** _

Jughead had reinvented himself.

He was a man transformed from the day five years ago when he’d lit out of Riverdale with a single bus ticket to nowhere.

There had been another promotion. His boss, an excitable and easily manipulated old man who appreciated his ‘drive’, made him part owner of Springwood Construction, so he could expect his paycheck to get a little fatter. His new house in the Vermont countryside, a modest two story building with a patio, hardly seemed worth the price it until one went around the back and saw the breathtaking lake shimmering out back. He even wrote for a local magazine part-time.

He was not _wealthy_ —yet—but he was doing well. Much better than any Jones had done for centuries, probably. Better than _most_ people in Riverdale had done. Truly he was living the American dream.

And he still found time for his nocturnal indiscretions.

Jughead had been going for nearly two years now, and was quite certain he was in no real danger of discovery. He was careful. Less than half of the corpses had been found, and those so badly decayed they offered precious little of use to investigators. Sometimes he got a little excited. Like three months ago, when he’d fallen upon a young couple in a car parked along the Blackstone River. He’d carved them bloody, but hadn’t had time to dispose of anything, and had left their corpses in the vehicle where he’d slain them. But usually, he wasn’t that sloppy.

He rarely used the same instrument twice. When he hunted in one place, he waited a good long time before returning there.

Sure, there was that composite sketch bouncing around, thanks to that one girl who’d gotten away near Lexington, but it hardly looked anything like him. 

Everything was going swimmingly.

Jughead took a left at the next corner.

This would be his fourth visit to Toledo since leaving Riverdale. Each one was a little victory over his mother.

He’d enjoyed the last laugh over FP when his father finally croaked back home, but he was not done with Gladys yet. So he came here when he could, to show her each time how much more successful he was then the last, how much more money he made, how much brighter his future was. He wanted to show her what her son had become without her.

Jughead knocked on the door.

It swung open, and his little sister nearly tackled him to the ground.

“Jughead!” she squealed.

“JB!” He lifted her off of her feet and spun her around. “Goddamn, look at you! Like a fucking weed!”

“Jughead—you’ve been on my doorstep for all of ten seconds. Do you want to watch the profanity around your sister?”

Gladys appeared from a back room. She crossed her arms. A slight, ambiguous smile sat on her lips.

Jughead put JB down.

“She’s seventeen, mom. You’re gonna have to let her grow up sometime.”

JB beamed.

“ _Thank_ you, Juggie. Finally, someone who takes _my_ side.”

He leaned down. She was taller now, but he still towered over her.

“Sorry I _missed_ your seventeenth birthday, by the way.”

“Oh, it’s no big deal,” she waved it off.

“Here’s an apology,” he said, and then he pressed a crisp hundred into her hands, making sure his mother saw. He kissed his sister on the cheek. Her face lit up like Christmas. “And…you got my card, I hope?”

JB smiled again. She dashed over to the coffee table adjacent to the television, rifled through a stack of papers, and retrieved a little homemade birthday card. She waved it in the air. Jughead smiled, too. He recognized the short, but heartfelt little message he’d scribbled out. And at the very bottom, his signature: _J. Jones_ , topped off with a minimalistic, three-pointed little crown. He used that on everything.He'd started doing that when he was a kid. His mom thought it was adorable. So he never really stopped. 

JB ran her fingers over the hundred dollar bill, as if afraid it might disappear.

“I’m gonna go stick this in my room before I lose it!” she squeaked. “Love you, Juggie!” then she darted off.

He and Gladys watched her go, and then turned their attention on each other.

“Good to see you, mom.”

They met in a brisk hug.

“You’re going to spoil her,” his mother said.

He shrugged.

“Someone’s got to.”

A brief look of hurt and anger crossed her face. He luxuriated in it.

Jughead took the house in.

“Nice place. Better than the last one,” he said.

It was a first floor apartment, but a nice apartment, with varnished floors and freshly painted walls and two bedrooms.

“Took me a while to save up,” Gladys said.

“I’ll bet.”

They had dinner that night, and Jughead had to admit, everything else aside, that his mother’s chicken _was_ pretty good.

“I’m telling you guys—“ he said. “You’ve _got_ to come visit me back in Vermont. JB, you’d love it. The lake out back is _massive_. The forest is beautiful. You could even bring a friend or two if you wanted.”

“I’d love to!” she replied.

“Sure, we’ll set it up. This summer, maybe.”

“Have you been back to Riverdale, lately?” Gladys asked.

Jughead snorted.

“Absolutely not. Nor do I have any intention of _ever_ setting foot in that shithole again.”

“You didn’t go back for your father’s fune—“

“Did you?” he demanded.

She didn’t answer. A dreadful silence fell over the table.

It was JB who broke it at last.

“Oh, Jug! You’re not gonna believe it! There was this statewide creative writing contest, right? Winner gets published in this magazine! Like, one of the ones you see on the stands everywhere! Anyway…guess who won?”

He smiled at her, big and wide.

“No shit?”

“I was over the fuc—over the moon,” she corrects, at her mother’s warning stare. “I couldn’t believe it.”

“I can,” Jughead replied. “You’ve got the writer’s gene, like me.” He cast an eye toward his mother. “God knows where we get it.”

“God knows,” Gladys sighed.

“So, JB, you’re almost done with high school, right?”

“Ugh, thank God,” she groaned.

“College plans?”

“I’ve been accepted into a few, actually, it’s just…” she looked down at her plate, downcast. “Well…you know, money is a problem…”

He swallowed a piece of chicken.

“No it isn’t. Let me know what you need, when you need it, and I’ll see what I can do.”

This time it was Gladys who looked at him. It was either anger or shame in her eyes. “Jughead, we can’t just—“

“I didn’t _get_ to go to college, mom. Don’t you think she deserves that opportunity?”

“You’re the best, Jughead,” JB said adoringly.

Dinner ended.

Gladys reminded JB that she had school in the morning, and ordered her to bed. The girl rolled her eyes, hugged her brother again, and retreated to her room.

Gladys waited until her daughter was asleep before tearing into her son.

“Why do you do this, Jughead?”

“Why do I do _what_ , mom?”

“You…you blow in here for a few days, flash money around like you’re Cliff Blossom, treat her like a princess, trying to turn her against me—“

Jughead had to hold back a sneer. He hadn’t expected her to come right out with it.

“Christ, mom. You know—what a goddamned mindset to have. I come and visit for maybe…the only time in a year, I give my little sister a few bucks because it was her fucking _birthday_ a few weeks ago, and the only _possible_ reason you can think of for any of that is that it’s all part of some grand conspiracy against _you_. No wonder you and dad ever got together, all you could ever see was _yourselves_.”

Gladys looked shocked. Caught off guard.

“Jughead, I…”

“Just save it. I’ll sleep on the couch, by the way. Don’t bother with that fold-out bed.”

The next day, he took JB to the movies. It was a picture about a clan of cannibals, which impressed Jughead from a filmmaking standpoint, but failed to inspire any real terror. The blood didn’t look real. Neither did the corpses. He’d yet to see a movie that did them justice.

“So, what did you think?” he asked his sister as they drove home.

“Spooky.” she said, rubbing her arms. “But…not too spooky. I think you inoculated me with all of those horror movies back at the Twilight.”

He chuckled and patted her shoulder.

“I’ve taught you well.”

“Listen…” she said, biting her lip. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“Sure. Let’s hear it.”

“I was wondering if I…could maybe come live with you for a while?” she asked, tentative.

He could have shouted for joy. If he’d wanted to strike a blow at his mother, this was better than anything he’d ever imagined. He could not have _dreamt_ of a victory sweeter.

“I don’t know…uh…I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” he said, in the tone of voice that suggested ‘ _but I can probably be convinced_.’ “

“It’s just…it’s so hard here, sometimes. We can barely keep the apartment and still have enough money left over for the two of us. And we fight a lot…I think maybe it’d be better for me _and_ mom if I went somewhere else for a while.”

“She would _not_ go for it.”

“When I turn 18, I mean. Just for a few months, maybe a year, while I get ready for college and all.”

“This is…definitely the sort of thing that calls for a thorough discussion between all parties concerned,” he said.

She beamed, because it wasn’t a ‘ _no’_.

He brought her home. JB wouldn’t broach the idea to Gladys tonight, but she _would_ eventually. When she turned 18, of course, Gladys could no longer _stop_ her, and he would have the ultimate revenge: divesting his mother of her last child. Leaving her cold. Alone.

Jughead was wonderfully thrilled by the idea. He was in a great mood. Too great a mood to sit down, much less sleep. He kicked the car to life and drove off. He prowled dim, muggy streets, tapping his hands on the steering wheel. He switched the radio on.

The Eagles hummed into his ears.

_On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair…_

He looked for someone alone. His mind was on fire, nerves burning, hands shaking.

The girl’s name was Alex Price, though he wouldn't learn that for a few weeks. She was coming out of a local bar a little past 2:00 AM. Jughead slid into the parking lot. He hopped out of the Pontiac and struck up a conversation. 

It wouldn’t be treated as a disappearance for another 24 hours. The idea of foul play would not even be considered by the police for another 48. By then, Jughead had bid his mother and sister goodbye, and returned to Vermont. Ohio was states away from his usual stomping ground. Probably, even if they found the body, this would not be connected to the ‘Lady-Killer’ case.

That first night back, found his answering machine full. Some were from his boss, probably. The rest he could ignore. Even those from work were not pressing. They wouldn’t fire him.

He had a few letters to write. Springwood construction was supposed to break ground on some visitor's center at a park over in Massachusetts the following month. He fired off one epistle to their customer, detailing prospective costs and timeframes. Like always, he signed off at the bottom:  _J. Jones_. And like always, he topped off his signature with a cute, three-pointed little crown. 

The first night back, Jughead lay awake in bed, and he began to think of Riverdale. He thought of Archie’s handsome face and Betty’s bright green eyes. He saw all three of them at the banks of the Sweetwater River, nipping at their ankles.

He didn’t think of them much more. He didn’t care. Not much.

At last, he fell asleep.

When he awoke, everything began to fall apart.

* * *

 

**District of Columbia, USA**

_**1984—two months ago** _

“You understand that—since the case hasn’t closed yet, there are some details I’m going to withhold from you?”

Toni nodded.

“Of course.”

“Very well.” Agent Adams dusted off his lapel. “What would you like to know? Within reason.”

“When did you get involved in the case?”

“We knew we had a multiple murderer—a ‘serial killer’, if you will—on our hands fairly quickly. People go missing all of the time, but these people all fit a profile. They were almost all young women or young couples. They almost all disappeared at night. They—the ones that were _found—_ had all been stabbed to death. But we had no leads. The bastard was smart. In only a handful of the cases did we have _any_ witnesses, and all they could tell us was that they’d seen the victims speaking with a tall white male with dark hair. That’s every other guy in New England.”

“So when did Ju—when did Jones become a suspect?”

“We got a tip,” Adams said.

“From Cheryl Blossom?”

“Fr—usually, I would withhold the name, but considering she’s hardly been shy about it herself, yes, it was Miss Blossom.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. Only that we should look into a man named Forsythe Pendleton Jones III. And—look, we were getting hundreds of tips a day. So were state police. The vast majority of them were worthless. People fingered weird neighbors, former lovers, anyone and everyone. We ignored most of them.”

“What was…special about this one?”

“Nothing at first. But some paper-pusher was cross-referencing a list of potential suspects with former offenders. We found out that when he was a kid, this Jones had been arrested back in his hometown, for ‘prowling’. He was, apparently, creeping around folks’ backyards with a knife. Of course, it didn’t necessarily mean he was our killer, but it was worth looking into, and we had no better leads.”

“So you checked him out. And what did you find?”

“He was a perfectly upstanding citizen. Partner at some construction firm. Except—he lived in Vermont, but he’d been in Massachusetts when Annie Brackett went missing and again when the Stanler girl did. He’d been in New York when April Brown was killed and in Maine when Tina Gray died. We couldn’t match him up to _every one_ , not even most, but a few. That was enough to warrant further investigation.

* * *

**Chittenden County, USA**

_**1977** _

Agent Arthur Adams scoped out the property. It was a nice house. Two stories high, with a sloping shingled roof, an old-fashioned chimney, and a marbled patio looking over the water.

There were six such houses, built in a loose ring around the lake, and surrounded beyond that by forest. The next town was only a ten-minute drive, but the little neighborhood gave the impression of isolation nonetheless.

Adams parked his car on a slope, some three hundred yards from the house he knew to be Forsythe Jones’. He didn’t think it likely the young man was their killer. Coincidences happened all the time. This was likely one of them. But still, it was an _odd_ string of coincidences.

He raised his binoculars. The lake was big. A good place to dump evidence, if need be.

He kept watching.

* * *

**Montgomery, USA**

**1984—nine hours ago**

“So let’s get to the good part,” Toni urged.

“You mean my arrest?”

“Right. Your arrest.”

“The cops were breathing down my neck,” Jughead growled. “I had no idea what they knew or how. I had no clue who had dropped a dime on me at that point.”

“Dropped a—who are you, John Dillinger?”

“I’m about to die, give me a damned break.”

“Anyway, so you took off for Maine?”

“I—I hardly meant to—“

“Right. And you ended up in Derry. Where not a year prior you'd uh—"Toni dragged a finger across her throat. She considered utilizing a euphemism, but it seemed disrespectful. . "Committed the murders of Tina Gray and Ben Tramer. Seems like a bad place to hide out."

“I went to Maine because I wanted to get away from home, but not go so far it looked like I was running. As for Derry—I already knew where it was. I'd been there a few times before uh... _that_ business. And besides, would you expect a killer to lay low at the scene of a crime?”

* * *

**Derry, USA**

_**1977** _

Derry was not a small town, but it was not a very large one, either. It was an insular, private sort of place. The buildings were mostly colonial brick. A stolid town hall presided over the narrow main street, adjacent to a courthouse that doubled as a prison.

Jughead eased his Pontiac past the faded ‘Welcome to Derry’ sign. Men and women turned to flash him dirty looks.

He was annoyed. Things were going badly. The police weren't exactly subtle, much as they might try to be. It didn't take a genius to notice the plainclothes cops staking out his house day and night. Jughead didn't know  _how_ they'd ever pegged him as a suspect, but they had. Which meant he was in a bind. No hunting until the heat was off. Goddamnit. 

It was bullshit. He'd waited nearly a month, and the surveillance never lifted. So he decided to get out of town. In all likelihood they would trail him. But it looked normal. He had a job. He could always claim he was on business. It would look odd if he just skulked around his house waiting for the authorities to lose interest. So he headed north. Maine.

He was familiar enough with the state, but hardly remembered until he was well within town lines. 

Jughead had been here before. Here on business, once or twice. Working out a lumber order or two. But more than that. He hadn't been back in almost a year.

Yes, almost a year ago, now. Those two kids. The guy and his girlfriend. Right. He remembered. They’d been out for a walk, along a quiet little country turnpike just a mile or so north of the town proper. He’d offered a ride. They said they hadn’t needed one—they were enjoying the evening breeze. Jughead parked the car. He followed them a little ways through the woods by the side of the road. They didn’t stand much of a chance.

He passed a fading poster pinned to a telephone pole. A smiling, carefree face peered out at him. ‘ _Have you seen me?'_ the poster pleaded. Tina Gray, her name was. Right.

Jughead probably should not be here. But then, he knew the authorities were watching him closely. They had nothing concrete on him, or they’d have made an arrest by now. If he _were_ the killer, would he return to a town where he’d committed one of his murders? No, surely not. So maybe he  _should_ be here. 

He rented a room at one of Derry’s picturesque little inns. He would stay here until the cops got bored. They didn’t have anything on him. They _couldn’t_. He was _so careful._ He never left anything of his behind. He never _took_ anything. His prey _never_ escaped. He didn’t send letters to the police like that loon in California.

Still, he slept fitfully that night.

Jughead took a cup of coffee the next morning in the lobby. Every other tenant in the building stared. He obscured his face with a book. When his coffee was done, he left the hotel in a hurry. Derry’s main street had a few decent shops for a rural town, but Jughead could hardly concentrate on anything when he felt like every eye was on him and him alone.

Stopping into a bookstore, a cashier raised his head and said: “say…I’ve seen you before, yeah?”

He froze. Had he visited this store the last time he was here? No. No, he couldn’t have. He’d stayed for less than a day before Tina and her boyfriend.

“No. I’m a…stranger to Derry,” he said.

The proprietor nodded, but didn’t take his eyes away.

Jughead perused the shelves, hands shaking, until he could take the nerves no more, and returned to his hotel room. He remained there for the next 18 hours, when he descended into the lobby and placed a phone call.

“Hey! JB!”

“Hey, Jug,” his sister answered. “Where are you calling from?”

“Uh…I’m on a business trip,” he lied. “Up north.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“What’s up?”

“Remember what you were saying about maybe living with me for a little while?” He could go to Toledo again, Jughead thought. It was further than Maine and he had a good excuse: he had family there. “Well…I was thinking maybe I come back and we discuss it with mom.”

“Yes!” JB exulted.

Just then, the inn’s doors opened. Two uniformed patrolmen stepped inside.

“I’ll call you back,” Jughead stammered.

The cops stopped by the front desk. The attendant nodded and pointed him out.

Jughead hung up the phone and started back towards the stairs.

“Mr. Jones!” one of the officers called.

He swore under his breath. Then he turned, slowly, and affected a great, fake smile.

“Morning, officers.” He strolled over to the pair. “Have I…offended?” he joked. Neither smiled.

“We’d like you to come with us, son,” the older said.

“Why?” Jughead demanded.

The cop put a hand on his arm.

“Just come along. It won’t take long.”

Jughead swallowed. Maybe it had nothing to do with the murders. Perhaps he’d run a red light or committed some parking violation.

And if he refused, he would look guilty.

“Am I being arrested?”

“No, no. Not at all. Just come with us.”

He nodded and followed along.

At the station, the policemen attempted to keep the mood light. They did not put him in cuffs, and they did not badger or mock him. He was not shunted into a sterile interrogation room with a good cop and a bad cop.

An avuncular sheriff sat down with him in a little space that resembled a waiting room, and said he wanted to ‘ask a few questions’. Jughead girded himself for a battle of wits.

“Look, I think I have the right to know what I’m here for,” he said.

The sheriff motioned towards a poster on the wall. Ben Tramer, again.

“As you might be aware, our town suffered a…terrible tragedy, not too long ago.”

Jughead nodded sympathetically.

“Yes…I uh, I heard. Really awful.”

“Miss Gray and Mr. Tramer were some of our brightest. It wounded us all.”

Jughead feigned shock.

“You don’t think I…”

“Oh no, no. It’s only…ever since the incident everyone’s a bit...leery. Especially of strangers. Especially ones who seem like they _might_ have passed through before. And we got a few calls identifying you as such. Have you ever been to Derry, Mr. Jones?”

“No, sir. It’s…possible I may have passed through before. I do a fair bit of traveling for my work. But that’s all.”

The sheriff nodded, and launched into further questions, each of which Jughead deftly batted away.

When the interrogation finished, he was helped to his feet, and escorted to a cell.

“Sorry about this, son,” the sheriff said, and then slammed the door shut.

He paced until morning. They had to release him within twenty-four hours unless they were charging him. And they had _nothing_ to charge him with. He wrapped his hands around the bars like a prisoner in an old movie.

When the sun _did_ rise, the sheriff returned to his cell.

“Sir,” Jughead said, choking down his rage. “I _am_ aware of my rights, and I’m _perfectly_ aware that you have got to let me go within twenty-four hours, _unless_ I’m being charged with something. Am I?”

The sheriff was quiet for a moment. He looked at the floor.

“No, son. You’re not. I think this is all a misunderstanding. I’ll have you out in time for breakfast.”

Jughead breathed deep in relief. And once they released him, they would never dare arrest him again, or risk looking like fools. He would be safe.

“Sir,” another cop poked his head around the corner. “Phone call.”

“From who?” the sheriff asked.

The cop whispered, but Jughead caught it anyway.

“FBI.”

The sheriff’s eyes popped, and he followed his flustered deputy out of he room.

He returned twenty minutes later, flanked by the deputy and one other. Jughead smiled triumphantly. He stretched out his hands for freedom. The sheriff unlocked the cell door and it swung open.

As he stepped out, a deputy clapped handcuffs onto his wrists.

“Wh—“

“Mr. Forsythe Pendleton Jones, you’re being placed under arrest.”

“On what _charges_?” he demanded, face twisted up in fury.

“The murder of Tina Gray.”

* * *

** New York City, USA **

_** 1977 ** _

Veronica sat back on her ottoman, one leg slung over the end, popping cherries into her mouth like a Roman empress. The radio was a little more than arm’s length away, and she was far too lazy to make such a stretch. She sighed and threw her head back.

This was living.

The phone rang.

With a groan of effort, she reached out and picked it up.

“Hel—“

“Veronica?”

“Uh…hello? Who is this?”

“It’s me! Jughead Jones!”

 _That_ was unexpected. Veronica’s lips twisted into a confused frown. She hadn’t spoken to him in nearly five years. She ate another cherry.

“Uh…hey Jughead. What’s…what’s happening?”

“Wh—you haven’t seen the news?”

“The news? What news?”

“Th—never mind. Look, I’m in jail.”

Veronica almost laughed. She had a hard time imagining Jughead in jail.

“In jail? What for? Did you write a bad book?”

“No! Veronica, _please_ look at a paper, or turn on the radio!”

Leaving the phone unhooked, she stood and sashayed over to the front door, where the mailman dropped a paper every morning. She plucked it from the mail slot and unfolded it. The headline hit her head on.

_Suspect in ‘Huntsman’ Murders Arrested._

Above that was a picture of a very flustered Jughead Jones, surrounded by deputies, and struggling to hide his face from the camera.

She rushed back to the phone.

“Is this kind of weird joke?”

“No! I can assure you this is most definitely _not_ a joke!”

“Jughead—I don’t mean to sound rude but…why are you calling _me_? Why not your mom or—“

“Listen, I know it’s a bit rotten to call up an old friend just to ask for a favor, but I’ve got to.” She heard him breath on the other end. “I need a lawyer, Ronnie.” He’d never called her Ronnie back in Riverdale. “I need a _good_ lawyer and I don’t have enough money to pay for all of this. They’re trying to railroad me. Make me out to be some kind of maniac. _Please_ help me out.”

Veronica swallowed. She certainly had the money to spare. There was no reason _not_ to help out an old friend.

“Well…you _didn’t_ do it, right?”

“Wh— _of course_ not!”

“Okay. Okay. Hang in there, Jughead. I’ll see what I can do and I’ll get back to you.”

The call ended.

Veronica pinched the bridge of her nose. She felt a bit guilty for even _asking_ if he’d done it. Of course he hadn’t.

She knew plenty of good lawyers. Her father had more or less kept them like livestock, and now she did the same. But she needed a particular type of good lawyer. This would be a case for the history books. The Huntsman Killer had by now captivated half country. Millions would follow every step of the proceedings, from Augusta to Atlanta.

Jughead needed someone fierce, unafraid, and most of all, not camera shy.

Veronica thought she had an idea.

It took her less than thirty minutes to hash everything out, and by nightfall, she was on a flight to Maine.

Derry did not impress her, with its rustic beauty and small town purity. The cops, who escorted her into the town’s quaint, but sturdy, jail, did not impress her. She left the lawyer outside as she allowed into his cell. Jughead did impress her, actually.

He had grown since she last saw him. He was taller now, his shoulders broader, eyes keener. His stupid hat was gone. He smiled at her.

She hugged him and he hugged her.

“I wish this was a happier reunion,” he said ruefully.

“Me too,” Veronica said. She didn’t break the hug yet. She just looked up at him and shook her head. “God, was it only five years ago?”

“It’s been a lengthy five years,” Jughead said.

They exchanged the brief, imperative small talk. She could see how eager Jughead was to get on with it. Not that she could blame him.

“Listen, Jughead. It’s really no problem,” she assured him. “I’ve got plenty of money to spare. And what kind of person would I be if I didn’t help an old friend in need?”

“An average one,” he joked.

“So, I found you a lawyer. With a bit of time, we can _probably_ put together a whole team for the defense, but just for starters. She comes…highly accredited,” Veronica said, almost suggestively.

Jughead began to pace.

“Great, who is she?”

“Her name’s Patricia Peabody. I’ve seen her rescue people from some serious shit, and let’s leave it at that. She’s been practicing for a while. Oh, and get this, she’s a former Serpent—“

Jughead spun around like he’d been bitten.

“Wait, _what_? Did you get me a fucking _mob lawyer?_ ” he demanded. His lip curled back into a snarl. His eyes narrowed.

Veronica stepped back, a bit frightened.

“She’s not a mob lawyer, okay. She’s legit, I promise. Shady past…notwithstanding.”

Jughead calmed down. His face regained its color. His snarl disappeared.

“Alright…alright…I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath. “Is she here?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Shall I bring her in?”

Jughead nodded towards the door.


	5. flown the coop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which a bid for freedom is made

** Derry, USA **

** 1977 **

Things developed quickly.

Patricia ‘Penny’ Peabody visited Jughead daily. Sometimes, Veronica came along. He got the sense this was more a distraction for her than anything else. She was bored in the city, and a murder investigation probably seemed just the thing to shake up her routine. He didn’t care, as long as she kept footing the legal bills.

He passed the time reading the papers. He wasn’t glad about his imprisonment, but there was a kind of thrill in his newfound fame. Journalists came by often, jonesing for an interview. He turned them away. The media was _frenzied_. He had his detractors and his defenders. Some tried to connect him with murders and disappearances in locales as far flung as Nevada and Hawaii. Jughead decided that was good. Let them make the whole thing look outlandish. Let them discredit the very idea that he could _possibly_ be a murderer.

The DA was trying to build a case against him. He knew that. A judge had been selected for the trial. Evidence was being gathered. Even if he was a suspect in the murders up and down the northeastern coast, Maine could only try him for the slaying of Tina Gray. But that would be enough to put him behind bars for the rest of his life.

“All they have is circumstance,” Penny assured him. She was an attractive, lively blonde woman in her early 30s, who in fact reminded Jughead a little bit of Alice Cooper. He tried to shunt that thought aside. “And circumstance—pardon my French—is worth jack shit on its own.”

Jughead nodded. 

“Well, what circumstance have they _got_?” he demanded. 

“They’ve got a few people willing to testify that they saw _your_ car, or another 1963 Pontiac, cruising around Derry the night Gray vanished. They’ve got that composite sketch from Rhode Island of the killer—which doesn’t look _too_ much like you. They’ve uh…they’ve searched your car by now and th—“

“ _What?”_ he demanded and leapt to his feet. “They’ve searched my car? Did they have a warrant? Can we—“ 

“’Fraid so,” she shrugged. “And they’ve found—they’ve _claimed_ to have found—a hair that might _possibly_ be that of Annie Brackett.”

Jughead sat back down, hands shaking. That couldn’t be. He’d been _so_ careful. He’d wiped down the car _completely_ every time he was done. He’d vacuumed and scrubbed and even perfumed. There was never anything left. But _one_ hair?

“But you said they were only trying to nail me for Tina Gray. So the Brackett girl is irrelevant.”

“They _are_ , but that doesn’t mean they can’t use evidence from the other cases against you.”

Jughead buried his face in his hands. This was bad. Worse than he’d thought. If they’d found one of the Brackett girl’s hairs, whose to say he might not have missed one of Gray’s hairs? Or someone else’s?

“Hair identification isn’t an exact science, though,” he said. “It’s—“

“No, you’re right,” Penny cut him off. “You’re right. And we’ll make sure the jury knows it. Remember, kid. I don’t have to prove you _didn’t_ kill those kids. I don’t even have to prove you _probably_ didn’t kill those kids. I just have to prove you _may_ not have killed those kids. Reasonable doubt, baby. It’s what keeps me in business.”

Jughead smirked.

“What else have they got?”

Penny put up a hand for silence.

She produced a manila folder, flipped it open, and revealed a photocopy of some old, yellowing office form. Jughead squinted at it. It looked vaguely familiar. He caught his name among the dates and technical jargon. 

“It’s an old police report. From your high school days. Apparently you were arrested for uh…voyeurism?”

“ _Detained_ ,” he insisted. “Not _arrested_. Never _charged_. And certainly never _convicted_. In fact—I was a minor, that shouldn’t even be—“

“Well, the prosecution’s got it, so it’s a little late for all that. We can try to get it thrown out during the arraignment.”

Jughead nodded.

“How do you like our chances?”

“ _My_ chances are good, I get paid either way,” she grinned. 

“Candid,” he scowled.

“That was a joke. I think our chances are _fine_ , Mr. Jones. Like I said, the case is a circumstantial one. So long as the DA can’t get his hands on anything concrete, they won’t secure a conviction. With luck, we can just get the whole thing thrown out.”

“Yeah, well, let’s not leave the outcome of this _murder trial_ to luck.”

She ignored him. “What’s just important as actual physical evidence is _perception_. We’ve got to show people that you’re a fine, upstanding young man and not, by any stretch of the imagination, a mass killer.”

“Well, I’d be _happy_ to show that, since I’m _not_.”

“Sure. But we’d need outside corroboration. So, why don’t we try to get hold of some character witnesses? Old friends, schoolmates or coworkers, who can tell everybody what a _nice guy_ you are?”

Jughead rubbed his chin. He hadn’t _had_ many real friends ever since leaving Riverdale. He had his coworkers at Springwood Construction. His boss. They would say he was a good, intelligent worker. But they hardly _knew_ him. A jury wouldn’t look kindly on a young man like him with no real friends and no girlfriend. It looked odd.

More and more, he felt gloomy about the trial. _Maybe_ there was a better than even chance he would get off. But he didn’t _want_ to take that chance. And besides, he could hardly stomach the idea of being hauled before a court in chains to be sneered at my some posse of 12 idiots and a gallery packed with rabble. No, he’d been humiliated enough in his life. The world had no right to sit in judgment over him. He would not stand it.

* * *

 

**Long Island, USA**   


**_ 1984-two months ago  _ **

Toni was surprised Elizabeth Cooper agreed to speak with her. 

Ever since Maine, the young woman had been deluged by phone calls, letters, and in-person solicitations from every breed of media personality on the earth. She’d long ago stop giving them the time of day, and Toni wasn’t sure what made this different. 

“I feel like you care about more than the sensationalism of it,” Betty explained, as they sat in her parlor.

Toni nodded. That was good enough for her.

“Well. I do. Maybe I didn’t at _first_ , but now, I do.”

“Anyway, some…federal agent came by a few days ago to harass me, so I’d like to get the taste of that out of my mouth.”

“Fair enough,” Toni said. 

“So, what do you want to know?”

“I’d like to hear about Maine. The first arrest.”

Betty nodded. She rubbed her chin. Her blonde hair looked frizzy, and her green eyes tired.

“I didn’t believe it at first—well, I did, but I thought it must all be some ridiculous mistake that would be cleared up right away. I called Archie immediately. We—we met up. We hadn’t spoken in almost a year, and we hadn’t really spoken to Jughead since high school. But…we…well, we thought we should go up there.”

* * *

 

** Derry, USA **

_** 1977 ** _

Derry was a media circus. Every paper and news station in New England and the mid-Atlantic jostled for space and airtime. The town of a couple thousand nearly doubled in population.

Betty Cooper and Archie Andrews arrived in town together. They secured beds for themselves only by working out a peculiar arrangement with a journalist who kept a nocturnal schedule, and thus allowed them use of his room at the Coldbrook Inn during the night. 

She didn’t sleep that first night, anyway. She had not seen Jughead since the spring they finished school. They’d sent letters for a few months. Then Jughead stopped responding. She had finished her first year of college with a great pit in her chest. With the ink still drying on her final exams she then rushed back to Riverdale. 

He was already gone. No one knew where. Not even FP. FP, pallid, tired, and broken, his drinking worse than ever in the wake of his son’s departure. He’d shaken his head, disappeared back into the dilapidated old trailer, alone. Two years later, he was dead.

So Betty left again, and tried to forget. 

And now this.

They drove to the jail in the darkness of the early morning, before the town and the media army roused.

Betty was waved through, tentatively, by a phalanx of uniformed policemen and security guards. The cell complex was in the back of the building, looking much as it probably had 100 years ago. 

Jughead’s cell was the last on the left.

“Hello, Jughead.”

He had his back to her, and turned with that familiar, overwrought theatricality. She suddenly felt like a week had passed since their last meeting, not four years.

“I knew you were coming and yet…I’m still surprised to see you. What brings you to Derry?” he approached the bars.

“That’s not funny, Jug,” Betty said.

“Hey, humor’s a scarce commodity in here.”

A guard lingered at the end of the hall, but it was a county jail. Security was lax. 

“Archie and I came as soon as—“

“Archie’s here?” 

“He’s outside. They’re letting us in one at a time.”

Jughead looked different. Besides the fact that he appeared taller, stronger, and leaner. His eyes looked different. If she didn’t know better, Betty might think the shade of blue had changed.

“One at a time,” he mumbled.

“I heard Veronica’s paying for your legal fees. That’s…that’s kind of her. Is she here?”

Jughead ran his tongue over his teeth.

“She’s back in the city, now. She drops by pretty often, though. Stick around for a little while, and you’ll catch her. Derry’s a nice place.” He grinned.

“So how…how are you holding up?” Betty asked, meekly. 

Jughead chuckled. He gestured to the bars.

“’Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

“Juggie…if you can’t stop cracking jokes even in the face of—“

“Look, I’m the one facing the hangman’s noose.” He mimed a rope around his neck, and Betty winced.

“There’s no death penalty in Maine,” she told him. “I’ve checked.”

“I _know_. Christ, did your sense of humor die over the past four years?”

Betty gritted her teeth. He was blasé. He was always blasé. But how could he be blasé about _this_? His life was at stake. Perhaps it just hadn’t sunk in yet. She had the sudden urge to give him a hug. This was her friend, Jughead, from school, who liked to write and eat burgers and make bad jokes. It disturbed her that he didn’t seem to recognize the mess he was in.

“No, Jughead, it just scares me to see a friend of mine behind bars.”

He leaned up against said bars, one hand on his hip, looking very unconcerned. 

“Well, it’s still better than my dad’s old trailer.”

Despite herself, Betty giggled.

“I’ve missed you, Jughead.”

His smile vanished. His eyes darkened.

“Why haven’t I seen you in four years, then?”

“I—I came back to Riverdale after my first year. I wanted to find you. You weren’t th—“

“Did you think the world froze while you were away? That I’d just hang around waiting? There was nothing left for me in Riverdale, painfully cliché as it sounds.”

Betty’s heart tightened up with guilt. Guilt that she’d ever left. Guilt that she’d been more fortunate than this man, who had been the boy she’d loved. 

She stepped closer to the cell.

The guard at the end of the hall moved towards them.

Betty reached a hand through the bars. Jughead didn’t move.

“I’m sorry, Jug. But I’m here now.”

“I suppose you are.” He leaned in, like he was going to tell her a secret. “While you’re here, would you mind telling everyone that I didn’t do it?”

Betty’s stomach churned. There was a question, niggling at her mind for the past several weeks. Gnawing at her. She didn’t want to ask it. She didn’t want it to be there. She didn’t even want the question to exist. But it did. 

“Juggie…you didn’t do it, right?”

Jughead’s face faltered. His eyes seemed to grow more profound. His lips parted. She saw a few tears clinging to his lashes. And yet…all of the outward signifiers of hurt were there, but put all together, they looked odd. Unnatural. Forced. She shook it off. This was her friend. And she’d hurt him with that question.

“Betty…do you really think I could ever do something like this?” He squeezed her hand.

Betty’s lip trembled. She felt low for having even asked. 

“I’m sorry. Of course not. I just…I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “I…despite everything, I _am_ glad you’re here. Truth is…I haven’t made so many friends since Riverdale. You and Archie are…well…you’re still the closest I’ve got.”

“We’re _here_ for you, Jug. You can beat this.”

He licked his lips. His fearful eyes stabbed at her. 

“I’m scared, Betty.”

She cupped his hands in hers.

“Don’t be. You’re a good man, Jughead Jones. You always were. You’re going to get justice.”

If she detected a sardonic, bemused little smile lurking just behind the mask of fear, she told herself it wasn’t there.

* * *

 

** Montgomry, USA **

_** 1984-eight hours ago ** _

“She believed you were innocent.”

“You say that as a statement, not a question,” Jughead said.

“When I spoke to Betty, she told me that. She had her doubts before, but after talking to you in the Derry jail she had no doubt you were innocent.”

Jughead nodded.

“Betty was…she was my friend. Of course she didn’t think I’d done anything.”

“She was more than your friend,” Toni pressed. “She loved you once. Did she still love you, then?”

Jughead turned away. He looked out the window.

“How the hell should I know?”

“You’re good at reading people. Certainly good at deceiving them.”

“Maybe she did love me. I doubt it. She wasn’t the type to dwell on a shriveled high school romance.”

Toni shrugged. “Seeing someone for the first time in four years is bound to make some old feelings flare up.”

Jughead sneered.

“Why do you care? Do you just need spice for the book?”

“Maybe.”

“Were you glad to see her?”

“Yeah. I was. Her _and_ Archie. They…grounded everything. Especially considering the timing of their arrival.”

“You mean the arraignment?”

“No, I mean Christmas. Yes, I mean the damned arraignment.”

* * *

 

** Derry, USA **

_** 1977 ** _

Betty turned her back and departed the cellblock, and Jughead broke his façade of nervous terror. He was glad she was here. She believed in him, even if there was a flicker of doubt somewhere beneath all of that sincerity and sympathy. Betty was just what Penny had in mind when she’d suggested a character witness. Who could doubt that golden hair and those big green eyes?

It was good that Betty believed in him. Maybe she could make other people believe in him. And he’d need that if he were going to walk out of here a free man.

Archie came down next.

Jughead looked his old friend over from head to toe.

“You look…bigger,” Jughead said at last.

Archie smiled nervously.

“So do you, Jug.”

“Mmm. I’m glad you could make the party.”

“I hear you’ve been doing pretty well,” Archie said, cheerily. Jughead smiled wryly. Of course, the big, hulking ginger wouldn’t even _mention_ the bars between them. He’d just ignore entirely the circumstances of their meeting. Classic Archie.

“Yeah. You could say that. Relatively, anyway.”

“You own a construction business, huh? Just like my dad?”

“I don’t own it. I might, someday. Assuming I ever get out of…”

“You know. I put out my first real album just a few months ago.”

Jughead sucked his teeth.

“I heard.”

“My agent says it’s doing great. Who would have thought? You’d end up the construction worker and _me_ the artist!” Archie laughed.

Jughead smiled.

“I still write. On the side.”

“Good! Good…” Archie squared his shoulders. His handsome face lost all levity. “Look, you’re gonna get out of here, man.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Jughead replied.

“This stuff happens. They’ll catch the right guy, soon.” 

He patted his friend’s arm through the bars.

Jughead _wished_ they’d catch someone else.

“You coming to the arraignment?” Jughead asked.

“Of course, dude. Betty and I will be there. Wherever you need us. Every step of the way.”

“You’re a good friend, Archie Andrews. Looking at us, one might think we’d seen each other in the past four years.”

Archie took it as a joke.

Ten minutes later, his time was up. Jughead watched, pensive, as the guard escorted him away.

The arraignment came two days later.

Jughead flashed a smile at the crowd spilling over the courthouse steps, and waved to the assembled cameras. His cuffs were undone once safely inside the building. He strolled up an aisle packed to bursting on either side. The gallery was full. Betty and Archie sat near the front. They each offered him weak smiles of encouragement. Veronica sat behind her two old high school friends. She nodded at him.

He sat next to Penny. The judge eyed him imperiously from the bench. Jughead threw a look at the prosecutor across the way. 

“All rise for the honorable Judge Creighton.”

Jughead stood, a sardonic smile on his lips.

“What are you smiling about, son?” the judge asked.

“Not much,” Jughead replied. A ripple of laughter coursed through the crowd. Penny nudged him. The judge scowled. So did the DA. 

The arraignment proceeded.

“Please state your full name,” the DA asked.

“Forsythe Pendleton Jones III.”

“Is that your true and legal name?”

“As far as I know.”

More laughter.

The DA frowned. 

“Mr. Jones, you are being charged with one count of murder. This count alleges that you intentionally caused the death of Ms. Tina Lee Gray, in violation of the Maine Criminal Code, Title 17-A, section 201. You are being charged, two, with one count of kidnapping. This count alleges that you knowingly restrained Ms. Tina Lee Gray with the intent to commit bodily harm upon her, in violation of the Maine Criminal Code, 17-A, section 301.” 

The Judge looked to Penny.

“Counsel, how does your client plead?”

“Not guilty,” Penny answered immediately.

The date of the trial was set for six weeks from the day. Bail was briefly discussed.

“Due to the gravity of the charges, the defendant is remanded to the custody of the state, without possibility of bail.”

Jughead gritted his teeth. 

As he was conducted out of the courtroom and back to his cell, he was deluged by cries of “Mr. Jones! Mr. Jones! Over here!” and “Did you do it?”

He said nothing, offering only languid smiles and lazy waves to the spectators. He caught Betty’s eye. She didn’t smile now, only looked at him with profound dismay. He shrugged. 

Back behind bars, Jughead started to pace again. The hallway was dark. The men in the cells around and before him were asleep. He pressed his face to the little porthole window. He would _not_ do this. He clenched and unclenched his fists. 

Jughead began to plan.

That night, he did not eat most of his dinner. He secreted it away in one of the hollow metal bars that made up the framework of his cot. The next night, he did the same thing. And the third, the same.

What he had by the fourth day was a rotting, noxious mixture of jail steak, potatoes, and beans. Holding his nose, he choked it down late in the night.

Just as he’d hoped, within a few hours he was vomiting uncontrollably. Jughead exaggerated the symptoms of his very real food poisoning, huddling on his cot, holding his stomach, and moaning.

“The hell’s the matter with you, kid?” demanded the guard who made his rounds each morning.

“F-fuck if I know,” Jughead groaned.

When his condition did not improve by the second day (because he kept eating the spoiled food), it was decided he needed medical attention. The little jail had no infirmary, so he was taken to the Derry General Hospital.

He committed every step of the journey to mind. The unlocking of his cell. The short, bumpy ride down Main Street, two lefts, and two rights, before they arrived at the hospital. The doors swinging open, and the guard taking up position outside of his room.

Security was tight. No one wanted to chance an escape. But that was all right. He had expected that. 

The doctors diagnosed him with food poisoning, which he’d expected. He spent the night there. 

At about 2:00 AM, there was a changing of the guard. A new officer arrived to keep watch outside his room. Jughead took that into consideration.

In the morning, he received two visitors.

“Well, well, well,” he said, sitting up in bed. “B and V together again. Never did I think I’d see the day.”

“Feeling okay, Juggie?” Betty asked.

“I’ll be very cross with you if you die in here,” Veronica said. “Because then I’ll have covered all those legal fees for _nothing_.”

He chuckled.

“I think I’ll survive. If only just.”

“What are they feeding you in there?” demanded an indignant Betty. “Dog food?”

“Worse. Prison food.”

Laughter all around.

“Honestly, though. You have the right to food you can actually _eat_ ,” Veronica said, crossing her arms. 

He waved her down.

“Honestly, it’s probably a one time thing. I doubt it’ll happen again. Anyway, it’s nice to lay in an actual _bed_ again.” He patted the mattress. It was stiff and thin, but still much better than the cot in his cell. 

“Listen, Jughead…” Betty started. He could tell something he would not like was coming. “I have to head back. I’ll be here for the opening hearing, no doubt. But, I’ve got work and…”

“Yeah, of course, no problem,” Jughead said. 

“Well…should I ask her, or will you?” Veronica asked.

“Well, Betty,” Jughead said. “We were hoping… _wondering_ …if you would consider testifying in the trial as a character witness? Just to tell people that I’m… _not_ a murderer?”

“Oh!” Betty exclaimed, taken aback. Jughead studied her face. She _did_ believe he was innocent, didn’t she? “Of…well…I’ll see if I can, Jughead,” she promised. 

He suppressed a scowl.

“Alright. Thanks.”

His two old friends departed. A few hours later, with Jughead’s condition improved, he was carted back to the jail.

A week later, he repeated the trick, vomited all over his cell, and landed himself in the hospital again.

He observed the patterns of his guards. It was only one man at a time. He simply sat outside Jughead’s hospital room and made sure he didn’t walk out. That was all. Since his last stint in the ER had gone by without incident, his jailers’ had relaxed their stringent security. When shifts changed, again at 2:00 AM, his guard walked down the hall to meet his replacement coming out of the elevator, and asked an orderly to watch Jughead for a moment. 

So that was his window. 

But he did nothing. Let them get even more comfortable.

The next morning, he allowed them to return him to his cell. In the afternoon, Penny dropped by. 

“I’ve been going over the prosecution’s evidence. You know, discovery.”

“Anything new?” Jughead wanted to know.

“A thing or two,” Penny replied.

Jughead bristled. 

“ _What_ thing or two?”

She sighed. 

“I guess they found a hair or two on Gray’s body they’re hoping to match to you.”

He very nearly fainted. She tried to slip it by as if it was no big thing, but it _was_. A victim’s hair in his car was one thing—a suspicious thing, but not damning in and of itself. But when that was compounded with _his_ hair on a victim…

“Thanks, Penny. What’s the trial date, again?”

“The 15 th . Two weeks from now.”

Jughead could not afford to await a jury’s verdict. His resolve strengthened. He had to act now.

Two days later, he made himself sick again, and received a bed at Derry General, again. 

That night the guard watching over him ended his shift, and asked an orderly to keep an eye on the prisoner for a moment, while he went and turned things over to the new guy. The orderly took a seat outside the room, and the guard strolled down the hall to meet his replacement coming out of the elevator.

Jughead got up, stuck his head out of the door, and asked the orderly if he could use the restroom. Just as Jughead had hoped, the orderly said he’d walk him—it was just across the hall. The orderly led the way, and while his back was turned, and the two guards were chatting at the end of the hall, Jughead switched the two slips of paper tacked up outside his room and the one next to it—the ones that identified which patient occupied which room. 

So now, it appeared ‘Forsythe Jones’ occupied room 237 and someone else occupied room 239.

He entered the restroom and walked right back out, and dashed back into his room, the orderly following behind. 

The guards finished chatting, and the new guy walked up to assume his post. The orderly jogged off down the hall without speaking with the replacement guard. The replacement guard walked up—and took up watch outside the wrong room. 

Jughead waited a moment. He stripped off his hospital gown. He took a deep breath, and then stepped out into the hall again.

The guard, outside 237, where Jones was supposed to be according to the slip of paper, thought nothing of the patient next door exiting his room. Making sure not to give the officer a glimpse of his face, Jughead strolled casually down the hall, and down a flight of stairs.

He walked right out of the front doors of Derry General Hospital. The two police officers parked outside did not give him a second look. 

Jughead waited until he was two blocks away to release a whoop of victory. 

At the Derry bus station, he bought a one-way ticket to Augusta. 

Five hours later, as the sun rose over the treetops on the outskirts of Derry, Forsythe Jones’ guard noticed his charge had been a little quiet. He poked his head into the room.

“You alright in there, kid? I—“

Not only was the bed empty, it was made. This room had not been occupied for days. He barged into the room next door. This one was empty, too, but the bed sheets lay in a crumpled heap, and an ID wristband reading ‘Forsythe Pendleton Jones’ sat in a neat little coil on the nightstand. 

At that very moment, a plane out of Augusta State Airport began its descent into Charleston, South Carolina. In a coach class seat, three down from the wing, Jughead Jones munched leisurely on a packet of peanuts.

* * *

 

**Niagra Falls, USA**   


_ **1984-six months ago** _

“And when he escaped? That didn’t seem suspicious to you? Not at all?” Agent Adams demanded. “Innocent men don’t run.”

Archie stood up. He would not be cowed by a man who shared his initials with a battery. 

“They do if they’re scared they might not be treated fairly in court.”

“And did Mr. Jones have any reason to believe he _wouldn’t_ be?”

“Well, I don’t know, I—“

“Where were you when you got the news?”

Archie snorted. He didn’t want to punch a federal agent in the face, but Adams was not making it easy. 

“What, do you think I helped him? Wouldn’t that have come up during the trials?”

“That’s not what I said, Mr. Andrews,” Adams said, leaning in towards him. Archie didn’t flinch away this time. He was growing accustomed to the feds’ intimidation tactics. “I’m just trying to get a complete picture.”

“I was back home. Actually, I was going to take the bus back to Maine so I could be there for him when the trial started.”

“And then you saw the news?”

“Agent—please, let me talk. No, I didn’t see the news."

"So you didn't know until _I_  contacted you?"

"No. Betty called.”

* * *

 

**Niagra Falls, USA**   


_ **1977** _

Archie strummed a few chords. He tried to harmonize his voice with the guitar. 

He was supposed to play a gig in Rochester, but he could hardly think straight. The image of Jughead pacing in his little cell ran through Archie’s head again and again. 

A little finger of guilt probed him in the base of the chest. Perhaps he should have reached out earlier. Tried to rebuild their friendship in the years since school had ended. Jughead had admitted that he had hardly made any new friends in the interim. 

Archie promised himself that when this was over and Jughead was released—and he would be, because he was a good guy and not a murderer—they would be friends again. He would go and visit Jughead in Vermont, and Jughead could come visit him. Everything would be all right. 

He put away his guitar. He wasn’t going to get anything done.

The phone rang.

Betty’s voice, wild and breathless, crackled through the line.

“Betty, what’s w—slow down.”

“It’s Jughead!” she gasped.

Archie’s guts froze up with fear. 

“What is it? Did something happen to him? Did the trial—“

“No. It’s…he’s uh…he’s gone.”

Archie shook his head. _Gone_?

“What do you mean? He…he escaped?”

“He was at the hospital for stomach pains again. They’re not sure how but he…yes, he escaped. He’s gone.”

“I…I don’t—why would he do that?”

“He was scared!” Betty cried. “He thought…oh God, this is a nightmare. Listen, the police have already talked to me. They’ll probably try to talk to you, too.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Archie breathed. 

“They said if he tries to contact us then…”

“What, we turn him in?”

“They said…yes…yeah. To…let them know.”

“I—I’ve gotta go, Betty. Thanks for telling me.”

“Alright, Archie.” He heard her take a breath on the other end. She wanted to say something more. “Be safe,” she breathed at last.

He didn’t ask.

“You too.”

A few hours later, Archie had his first encounter with Special Agent Arthur Adams. 

“Nice place,” the FBI mumbled as he strolled into Archie’s house, shoes still caked with mud. He fingered a guitar on the wall.

“Sir, please don't to—“

“Sorry about that.” He whirled around, and Archie felt compelled to sit. “I’ll get right to it. Has Forsythe Jones contacted you in the past two days?”

“Has he—no, of course not. Why would he do that?”

“Because you’re his friend,” Adams said, like to a child. “People contact their friends.”

Archie grumbled.

“Not when they’re on the run from the cops.”

“Maybe. If he’s smart enough.”

“Trust me,” Archie assured him. “He is.”

Adams smirked. 

“If he _did_ contact you, I hope you’re not foolish enough to do anything besides contact the authorities as soon as possible.”

“Of course,” Archie responded, feeling like a traitor just for saying it.

“I know he’s your friend, but he’s also a fugitive and a dangerous one.”

“Dangerous?” Archie demanded.

“He’s a suspect in over thirty murders in four different states.”

“ _Suspect_!” Archie belabored the point. “You haven’t _proven_ anything.”

“If you really believe he’s innocent, than he has nothing to fear from a court of law.”

“Except being railroaded.”

“Well, he can’t prove his innocence while on the run. So tell me, Mr. Andrews, where do you think he’d go?”

“Wherever you’d least expect him to. He’d never go anywhere he had a personal connection with. He’s not that dumb.”

“So you can’t help us?” Adams asked with mock disappointment.

“No, Agent Adams. I can’t. And I’m busy, so—“ 

“Of course you are. I’ll remind you again, Mr. Andrews, if you _did_ aid your friend—a fugitive from the law—in any way, there would be _severe_ consequences. For the both of you. You’d do well to remember that.”

“I won’t forget it.”

Adams asked a few formal questions, jotted down a few notes, tipped his hat, and departed. “Good day, Mr. Andrews.” 

Archie slammed the door behind him. 

“Asshole.”

He settled in and turned on the news. Flicking through channels, he stopped at his friend’s name.

“—orsythe Pendleton Jones III.” said a news anchor, standing before the courthouse in Derry. “Mr. Jones, who goes by the nickname, ‘Jughead’, is a suspect in over thirty murders committed in six different states. He escaped police custody here in Derry yesterday, and his current whereabouts are unknown. Residents are advised…”

Archie turned it off again.

_Jughead…don’t get hurt._


End file.
